From Medical Center Public Relations
The Board of Regents, at its October meeting, approved the site master plan for a new ambulatory care medical campus in northeast Ann Arbor.
The East Medical Campus, which will provide primary and secondary care in a patient-centered environment, will be built in an area bounded by Plymouth and Earhart roads near Domino’s Farms. It is intended to complement the A. Alfred Taubman Health Care Center and incorporate the current Northeast Health Center facility. A spring 1996 opening is targeted.
“Over the past year the University has acquired almost 348 acres of land and the remaining 42 acres will be acquired within the next 30 days,” Executive Vice President Farris W. Womack said. “A portion of this total 390 acres is for the purpose of creating an ambulatory care medical campus for our Medical Center.
“As we begin to develop our plans for the first facilities on this campus, we have concentrated on the formulation of a master plan that will provide the overall land use framework to guide us over many years to come. This proactive approach to planning is consistent with our development efforts for all of the University’s major campuses.”
The master plan has been prepared by Johnson, Johnson and Roy, Inc., with input from the architect, the Ann Arbor Township, the Washtenaw County Road Commission, Botanical Gardens, a selection of representatives of the Medical Center, the Univer-sity Architect and the University Planner.
“Our hope for this East Medical Campus is that it will serve as a model for ambulatory primary and secondary patient care and education,” said John D. Forsyth, executive director of the U-M Hospitals, and Giles G. Bole, dean of the Medical School.
“This provides the Medical Center an exciting opportunity to implement state-of-the-art technology, improve clinical efficiency, develop creative means for providing services to patients, and develop innovative methods for teaching medical students and physicians that will enhance the academic mission of the Medical Center,” they said.
The campus will be designed in phases over several years. In phase one, the current Northeast Health Center and several other existing primary care programs will be relocated to the new facility. Further expansion of the East Medical Campus will be based on patient demand, the need to integrate and coordinate patient care services across all Medical Center sites, and the impact of managed care and health care legislation. Because health care needs will change over time, the new campus will be flexible to accommodate those needs.
“This new primary care facility will become the cornerstone of a campus that will take us into the 21st century,” Bole and Forsyth said.
Participation in the planning process for the East Medical Campus has involved representatives of the Medical, Nursing, Pharmacy, Public Health and Social Work schools as well as U-M Hospitals’ administrators and staff.
