Growth Spurt

Health care facilities are booming in the East Valley

By Kerry Duff

Hospitals and medical facilities in the East Valley are rapidly expanding to keep up with population growth and the emerging need for more hospital beds and high-quality medical care.

Mercy Gilbert Medical Center
Mercy Gilbert Medical Center opened the fourth floor of its newly constructed Tower B in March, with 28 beds dedicated to orthopedic and neurosurgery. It also expanded its Intensive Care Unit (ICU) to 24 beds after opening 12 patient rooms in the new tower.
In February, the Lund Family Pediatric and Adolescent unit opened on the tower’s first floor with a 28-bed post surgical unit on the second floor. The unit has 22 private rooms and a playroom geared toward children of all ages. To care for patients in the new tower, Mercy Gilbert recruited three orthopedic surgeons who specialize in sports medicine and joint replacement, two surgeons affiliated with Barrow Neurological Institute in downtown Phoenix and three ear, nose and throat (ENT) surgeons who will handle everything from basic tonsils to complex ENT surgery.

The tower’s third floor is shelled until next winter, when it will open with 28 beds and two additional operating rooms. At that time, Mercy Gilbert will have a total of 210 beds, says Laurie Eberst, the hospital’s president and CEO.

Mercy Gilbert’s sister hospital, Chandler Regional Medical Center, is currently making plans to add an $85 million, five-story addition to the east side of its building. The first floor will have a newly expanded emergency room that will decompress the entire hospital, says David Covert, the hospital’s president and CEO.

The addition’s second floor will have extra operating rooms and necessary support space. A 36-bed critical care unit will occupy the third floor, with medical and surgical beds on floors four and five.

Banner Health
Banner Health, Arizona’s largest health care provider, recently opened Banner Gateway Medical Center on U.S. 60 and Higley Road in Gilbert. Banner Gateway has 176 private rooms, eight operating suites and a 37-bed emergency department. The 60-acre campus was designed with room to triple in size, adding two additional patient towers and coordinating support services.

In mid-first quarter of this year, Banner will break ground on Banner Ironwood Medical Center, an 80-acre medical campus located southeast of Queen Creek on Gantzel Road in Pinal County. The hospital plans to open in early 2010 with 24 beds in a four-story tower, and will operate an emergency room and a radiology department to support diagnostic capabilities.

Banner Children’s Hospital is the centerpiece of a $328 million expansion project underway on the campus of Banner Desert Medical Center in Mesa. When the new children’s tower opens in summer 2009, Banner Children’s Hospital will grow from its current size of 137 pediatric beds to 248 beds. Another 120-bed tower can be added in the future for a total of 368 pediatric beds.

“There’s a lot to be done in the East Valley and it’s tough to keep up,” says Susan Edwards, Banner Health president, Arizona region. “But we have a strategy that includes buying enough land before it’s used for other purposes to grow our facilities as the population grows.”

A.T. Still University and Abrazo Health Care
A.T. Still University and Abrazo Health Care (the Arizona platform for Vanguard Health Systems) are working together to design a 133-acre health and technology park between Baseline and U.S. 60 in Mesa. The hospital system bought 80 acres next door to the university in 2005, and since then the two have been working together to create a master plan for an urban health technology research park that will include an Abrazo hospital, two specialty hospitals, numerous medical office buildings, 12,000 to 14,000 parking spaces and a variety of clinical settings such as rehabilitation and physical therapy. Plans also call for an assisted living facility for older adults, professional office buildings, student housing and a YMCA that will break ground in mid-year.

The Alter Group of Scottsdale is developing the property. To date it has built two, 40,000 to 50,000 square foot buildings. One building has a dental clinic, dental residency and dental lab to trains students from the Arizona School of Dentistry and Oral Health at Still University. The dental school started five years ago and recently graduated its first class.
Medical offices for physical therapy, orthopedics and X-rays are housed in the second building. The Alter Group plans to break ground on a third building later this year.

“The health and technology park is a unique environment and we hope to attract medical folks that want to be part of many things, such as practicing in an office, clinic work, surgery, partnering with an audiologist and taking up an academic role as a professor,” said Gary Cloud, assistant provost of Still University.

www.mercygilbert.org
www.chandlerregional.org
www.bannerhealth.com
www.atsu.edu
www.abrazohealth.com
www.altergroup.com