Capital investment – which is money spent on buildings, facilities and equipment – helps an organization maintain its leadership position. At Penn Medicine, our current and future projects represent something more important: a way to continue providing high-quality health care and improving each patient’s experience.
Some of our projects are driven by the evolving health-care environment. For example, outpatient –- or ambulatory -- health care has grown tremendously since the early 1980s. Advances in microsurgery and technology have made it safe for many procedures that once required a hospital stay to be done as day surgery. Even more important, it’s more convenient – and less stressful – for patients. And the cost can be less than half of an inpatient service.
That’s why all three of Penn Medicine’s hospitals are shifting many of their outpatient services to freestanding facilities. For example, the Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine now houses many of the ambulatory services once provided at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. The Perelman Center provides an eco-friendly and easy-to-navigate environment for patients and families. It offers spacious exam rooms, comfortable waiting rooms, and consultation rooms which bring health-care providers directly to patients, eliminating the need to visit different offices around the medical campus. A $102 million, 200,000-square-foot addition now under construction will allow the Center to house nearly all of HUP’s outpatient services when it’s completed in 2014.
The new Penn Center for Specialty Care, slated for completion in late 2014, will provide space for some of the outpatient services currently provided at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center. Located at 3737 Market Street, the facility will include approximately 120 exam rooms, six outpatient ORs and outpatient radiology services.
Penn Medicine Washington Square will serve as the major locus of outpatient care for Pennsylvania Hospital when completed in the fall of 2013. The $22 million facility will feature 12 stories of ultra-modern, eco-friendly space for patients and visitors. Constructed above an existing parking garage at 8th and Walnut Streets, the 153,000-square-foot facility will bring multiple departments currently spread across seven buildings around the PAH campus together in a single location, just down the street from the main hospital.
Like the Perelman Center, both the Penn Center for Specialty Care and Penn Medicine Washington Square are setting the stage for convenient, interdisciplinary care and, ultimately, a better patient experience.