Thursday, April 16, 2015

Main Line hospital to embark on $200M 'modernization' project.



Main Line Health is planning a $200 million "modernization" project at Bryn Mawr Hospital.

Health system officials described the Bryn Mawr Hospital initiative as "the most significant facility improvement" in its 122-year existence and the second largest capital investment in Main Line Health history.


"This is historic," said Andrea Gilbert, Bryn Mawr Hospital's president. "This is the next chapter in Bryn Mawr Hospital's long history. We waited a long time to do this. We wanted to assess what the community's future needs will be. We spent the last decade studying all of that, and now we are ready to roll up our sleeves and make this investment."

Jack Lynch, the president and CEO of Main Line health said the project will ensure Bryn Mawr Hospital is positioned to provide preventive health services as well as advanced technology and treatment options for patients and community members "well into the future.”

The centerpiece of the project is a five-story, 203,000-square-foot patient-care pavilion that will allow the hospital to convert from a mix of private and semi-private patient rooms to all private rooms.

Two floors of the pavilion will house 54 new medical/surgical beds. The building will also create space for a new 18-bed intensive care unit and 12 new operating rooms.

The hospital is licensed for 319 beds. Gilbert said the number of staffed inpatient beds, now about 250, is expected to remain at that level after the project is completed.

The building — in the center of the hospital's largely land-locked campus — will replace its Clothier Building and a medical office building, both of which were torn down last summer.

The project also includes major renovations to the hospital's maternity department and to its Warden Lobby, the hospital’s main entrance on Old Lancaster Road, along with an addition of two levels to the Bryn Mawr Avenue parking garage.

Along with the $200 million modernization project, a new 100,000-square-foot medical office building for multi-specialty doctors' offices will be built on Bryn Mawr Avenue by an unnamed private, national developer.

Construction for the new patient-care pavilion and the other hospital renovations will begin the summer of 2016. Completion is expected by the winter of 2018. The architecture and planning firm RTKL is designing the pavilion. HSC Builders & Construction Managers is overseeing the construction. Stantec Consulting Services Inc. is serving as the overall project manager.

The Bryn Mawr Hospital project is Main Line Health’s third major hospital expansion initiative in recent years.

Last year, Lankenau Medical Center in Wynnewood, Pa., completed a $465 million expansion and renovation project that included the 274,000-square-feet Heart & Vascular Pavilion.

Paoli Hospital in Chester County underwent a $145 million expansion, completed in 2009, that included a 259,000-square-foot patient-care pavilion that doubled the size of the medical center.

The health system also opened a $40 million, 80,000-square-foot outpatient facility in 2010 at Riddle Memorial Hospital in Media, Pa.

Main Line Health’s building projects — driven by the need for newer and more modern facilities to serve aging baby boomers and growing populations in some of the communities it serves — haven’t always been welcome by the hospitals' neighbors.

When it proposed in 2002 to buy up what amounted to a block of houses near its Bryn Mawr Hospital, neighbors thought the move was overly aggressive. It again caused a stir in 2004 when it planned to expand Lankenau Hospital by 1 million square feet and rezone land to accommodate those new facilities.

After initial trepidation, much of the expansion has occurred after making some adjustments to placate community concerns. It appears from early indications that this next round of development that the health system is proposing to undertake at Bryn Mawr is being better received. Lower Merion’s planning commission moved earlier this month to recommend approval for the health system’s plans.

Lankenau and Paoli were the two most profitable suburban Philadelphia hospitals in 2013, according to the most recent financial performance report issued by the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council. That report showed Main Line’s other two acute-care hospitals were also profitable in a year when eight of the 24 hospitals in the four counties surrounding Philadelphia posted losses. Bryn Mawr had a net income of $41.4 million. Riddle Memorial in Media, Pa., eked out profit of $367,000.

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