Every day, more patients from every county of Michigan and beyond seek care from the University of Michigan’s hospitals — a rising demand that the U-M Health System has worked to keep pace with.
The Board of Regents on Thursday approved a $9 million project that will help that effort and make U-M’s advanced patient care available to even more patients, by renovating an existing hospital area to create a 22-bed short-stay unit.
By next summer, adults who need just one or two days in the hospital before going home or to another care setting will receive treatment in the new unit or one of two others already located in the flagship University Hospital.
The project will renovate 17,900 square feet of space and install all-new medical equipment on the fourth floor of the former Mott Hospital, now called University Hospital South. The 2011 opening of the new C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital and Von Voigtlander Women’s Hospital facility freed up the building for other uses.
U-M’s 1,000 hospital beds have remained full for years despite continued efforts to increase capacity. The short-stay unit is the latest in a series of projects that make up a comprehensive initiative to increase adult inpatient capacity across U-M’s medical campus to meet steady increases in demand for hospital-based care.
Earlier this year, the regents approved the $11 million Emergency Critical Care Center, a section of the adult emergency department that will open in early 2015 to offer specialized care for severely ill or injured adult emergency patients. In September, they approved a $23.5 million adult operating room expansion project in University Hospital.
In recent years, UMHS has opened similar units in University Hospital for short stays after surgery, emergency visits and post-procedure care, and maximized the use of other clinical buildings.
University Hospital South, where the new short-stay unit will be located, also houses outpatient clinics and is the temporary home for many education activities and services for the Medical School’s medical students and biomedical science graduate students.
The education functions and staff will move back into the Taubman Health Sciences Library building in summer 2015 after completion of an extensive redesign and upgrade of that facility to meet modern educational needs.
Funding for the short-stay unit project will be provided by the U-M Hospitals and Health Centers.
