Hospital to expand facilities

By Michelle Hagopian

Published Feb. 5, 2008

The UM system Board of Curators approved funding to add a new surgical tower to University Hospital in their meeting last week.

The tower will serve multiple functions, University Hospital and Clinics spokesman Jeff Hoelscher said.

“The new tower will obviously add more space for surgery, but it will also consolidate all Ellis Fischel Cancer Center inpatient and outpatient services and house a new pediatrics intensive care unit,” Hoelscher said.

In 2005, the UM Health Care system began working on new facility plans. The design is intended to guide the operations and expansion of the system through 2020, the news release stated.

University Hospital and Clinics spokeswoman Mary Jenkins said the facilities plan consists of three phases.

“Phase one includes everything included with the surgery tower, in addition to a free-standing Orthopedic Institute, renovation to the Children’s Hospital on the sixth and seventh floors of University Hospital and a new parking garage,” Jenkins said.

The added space in the Orthopedic Institute will allow for physical therapy, occupational therapy and prosthetics-orthotics functions, Jenkins said.

Jenkins said phase one should be completed in 2011 at a projected cost of $220 million. Phases two and three include the renovation to University Hospital, which will be completed before 2020.

The surgical tower will be added to the north side of the hospital, Hoelscher said.

Hoelscher said the new parking garage would be placed at the corner of Monk and Hospital Drives to accommodate patients, visitors and employees.

Parking became difficult for patients and visitors with the added construction projects, but University Hospital and Clinics started offering free valet parking at University Hospital, University Physicians Medical Building and Columbia Regional Hospital, Jenkins said.

The health system also added bus shelters and began a shuttle service from parking lots to hospital facilities to assist staff members, Jenkins said.

She said construction began in 2007 on Hospital Drive to make improvements to water, sewer, steam and power lines.

“This maintenance of the infrastructure is needed to support the planned extensions,” Jenkins said.

The MU campus is in charge of the infrastructure and working on upgrades of various utilities that support these and other campus projects, Jenkins said.

“Above all else, this is a campus-funded project,” she said.

Last year’s omnibus higher education bill that sold assets from the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority, Missouri’s state student loan agency, to fund capital improvement projects, cut plans for a new Ellis Fischel Cancer Center facility.

But a bill that would restore the $32.1 million in cut funding is making its way through the Missouri Senate.

Jenkins said the new tower will increase University Hospital’s surgical capacities by adding 12 inpatient operating rooms. In addition, 26 private adult care beds and 16 adult intensive care unit and step-down unit beds will be added, along with two radiology rooms.

“The new tower will also boast new imaging equipment, which includes a magnetic resonance imaging machine, two flat film cameras and two ultrasound cameras,” Jenkins said.

The tower was originally a proposed stand-alone structure, but the curators approved changes to make it a wing of University Hospital, the news release stated.

By linking the tower with University Hospital, expensive costs can be avoided such as duplication of services, staff and equipment.

The projected cost for the tower amounts to $157 million.

Oliver said the new facilities add to the number of places MU students can go in regard to clinical rotation.

“Unfortunately, these facilities will not have any impact on how many students we can graduate,” Oliver said. “It essentially creates a higher demand of graduates that we can’t meet.”

Hoelscher said this is a “great time” for University Hospitals and Clinics.

“The master facilities plan is being implemented to improve and expand the services we provide and it certainly is going to be exciting,” he said.