To meet the growing demand for high-quality surgical care, the U-M Health System will renovate its surgical suites to create four new operating rooms in University Hospital.
The $23.5 million expansion project was approved Thursday by the Board of Regents. It is part of the hospital’s comprehensive initiative to create much-needed surgical capacity for adults.
The project will renovate approximately 24,500 square feet within the surgical suite for the new operating rooms and create support spaces for operating room equipment storage, offices and a new staff lounge.
Specialized neurology clinics that provide brain-activity and nerve testing will relocate from University Hospital to UH South (the former C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital and Women’s Hospital) to make way for the support spaces.
The operating room expansion project is expected to be completed in spring or early summer of 2016. UMHS will seek needed approvals from the state Certificate of Need commission.
“This investment in adult operating room capacity will improve patient access and our overall ability to accommodate the growing number of patients who seek our care,” says T. Anthony Denton, acting chief executive officer of U-M Hospitals and Health Centers. “The result will be a better experience for patients and our care team.”
The reconfiguration of the surgical suite will be completed with an eye toward providing operating room spaces that house state-of-the-art technology and equipment for a variety of surgical procedures.
At U-M, patient care discharges and observation cases grew by 3 percent during the past fiscal year ending June 30. Surgical cases grew by 3.8 percent during the same period, from 49,699 to 51,583.
UMHS has plans for other capacity expansion to address growing demand, including operational improvements to increase efficiency, in addition to construction of new short-stay patient capacity, creation of an adult critical care unit in the emergency department, and adding an operating room at the Children’s Hospital for adult patients.
Outpatient care also has been expanded with the recent opening of the Northville Health Center in July.
