A new eight-story patient care tower that culminates a four-year, $155 million building project at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center is almost complete.

A window cleaner works outside the chapel of the new eight-story patient-care tower at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. (Ernest Coleman photo) | ZOOM |

        As last-minute detail work continues, a series of grand opening events starts Thursday, with patient services opening in phases throughout September.

        The $70 million brick and concrete tower in Corryville will make one of the nation's biggest and busiest pediatric medical centers also one of the newest, with all inpatient services and many outpatient services now located in facilities built since 1993.

        It also represents the completion of the largest medical construction project in Greater Cincinnati in several years.

        U.S. Sen. Mike DeWine, R- Ohio, is expected to be the key speaker at a dedication ceremony Thursday to mark the opening of what hospital officials call “The New World of Children's.”

        “Our future, and the health of children who receive care here, has never looked brighter,” said James Anderson, president and chief executive officer of Cincinnati Children's.

        Cincinnati Children's Hospital ranks third among the nation's pediatric medical centers in research funding from the National Institutes of Health. It also was ranked among America's top 10 pediatric centers in a survey published this year by U.S. News & World Report.

CONSTRUCTION

Building “Location A” required a massive amount of material. Among that used to build the 447,300-square-foot facility:     • More than 1 million square feet of drywall.     • 750 miles of wire (nearly 4 million feet).     • 21,000 cubic yards of concrete.     • 2,100 tons of reinforcing steel.     • 826,120 bricks.     • 51,000 concrete blocks.     • 5,517 lineal feet of stone sills.     • 7,533 bags of masonry mortar.     • 7,956 gallons of paint.     • More than 2,000 doors.     • 984 exterior windows.     • 1,550 plumbing fixtures.     • 21,000 feet of plumbing pipe.     • 1,520 medical gas outlets.     • 8,750 light fixtures.     • 9,630 duplex receptacles.

THE NEW TOWER

Name: Location A (existing hospital tower becomes Location B).     Project location: Burnet and Erkenbrecher, Corryville.     Project started: August 1998.     Project cost: $70 million (part of a larger $155 million expansion project).     Size: Eight stories, 447,300 square feet. Services in new tower:     First floor: Orthopedics, primary care, teen health center, kidney clinic, chapel.     Second floor: Storage, offices and mechanical systems.     Third floor: Clinical research, sleep lab, surgical inpatient rooms and some procedure rooms.     Fourth floor: Child and teen psychiatry, rehabilitation centers.     Fifth floor: Hematology/Oncology, bone marrow transplant unit.     Sixth floor: Cardiac care and medical/surgical inpatient rooms, activity center, teen center.     Seventh floor: Neurology and neurosurgery, nutrition therapy.     Eighth floor: Offices and mechanical systems. Project highlights:     A computer-based system in which all medical orders are entered and documented electronically.     A new nurse call system, COMposer, which uses an infrared “tagging” device to find nurses anywhere in the hospital.     Improved amenities for families and children, including computer workstations, laundry facilities, more comfortable sleep sofas, rooms for nursing mothers, and more child activity and play areas.     New artwork throughout the building.     A new chapel.     Other recent expansions at Children's Hospital:     Expanded research labs, completed in 2001, bring total research space to 521,000 square feet in five buildings.     The Albert B. Sabin Education Center, opened in March 2001.     Expanded visitor parking garage, completed in March 2001.     Acquiring the former Phoenix International site in College Hill and the former Bethesda Oak Hospital campus in Avondale.

GRAND OPENING

Thursday: Tower dedication and V.I.P. tours.     Friday: Tours for employees and community physicians.     Saturday: Open house and public tours from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.     September: Services in the tower begin in phases.     Information: 636-4656.

        The new tower includes facilities for cancer, cardiac, orthopedic, neurological and psychiatric care. It will feature an industry-leading bedside computer record-keeping system, a new nurse call system, a new chapel, and a host of improved amenities for patients and families.

        The $155 million expansion project (including the tower, expanded research labs, an education center, and a bigger parking garage) comprise the Tristate's biggest medical construction project since 1997, when the Health Alliance of Greater Cincinnati completed an $90 million expansion of Jewish Hospital in Kenwood.

        In other large hospital projects, Christ Hospital is pumping about $77 million into a new heart wing. Bethesda North Hospital plans a $29 million expansion of its operating rooms. Meanwhile, Middletown Hospital is debating locations for building a $135 million hospital and doctor offices.

        At Children's Hospital, as many as 237 children at a time will occupy beds in the new tower. Hundreds of other patients will visit clinics there every day. And as many as 1,200 of the hospital's 6,500-plus employees will spend at least part of their workday in the new tower.

        “It's a huge transition. But it will be much easier for staff and much safer for patients. People won't have to wind through tunnels anymore,” said Dorine Seaquist, senior vice president of patient services.

        Yet, as big as the 447,300-square-foot tower may be, it increases the hospital's overall capacity about 13 percent, from 330 beds to 373 beds.

        Instead, the project reflects a fast-growing institution that has been starving for more space for the past several years.

        “We've been so crowded. And the technology of health care continues to grow, so it takes more space to provide care,” Ms. Seaquist said. “There is so much more research going on here now. We're taking care of children we couldn't take care of here before.”

        When Thomas Kinman, vice president of facilities management, started working there in 1982, Children's Hospital had 600,000 square feet of building space.

        The new tower project, along with recent acquisitions of the former Bethesda Oak Hospital campus in Avondale and the former Phoenix International campus in College Hill, brings the total to 3.5 million square feet.

        “Just this year, we're adding more square feet than we had when I started 20 years ago,” Mr. Kinman said.

        Two decades ago, patient rooms were built as small as 120 square feet (10 by 12 feet) and often were expected to be shared by two or more patients.

        Now, all Children's Hospital rooms will be private, and most will be at least 225 square feet.

        With the new design, there's more lounge room for visiting families, private places for breast-feeding moms and bigger pullout beds for parents. There's more space for separated activity centers, and classrooms for teens and younger children. There's wiring in the rooms to allow people to plug in their laptop computers.

        Planning for the new tower started about 1996. Construction actually began in 1998 with a deep hole for a thermal cooling tank and then a parking garage that form the new tower's foundation, Mr. Kinman said.

        At peak times since work began in 1998, as many as 600 construction workers were on-site, with thousands of workers from hundreds of contractors involved in the project over the years.

        From design to construction, nearly all the work was routed to local companies, Mr. Kinman said.

        “We are supported by a local tax levy, so we thought it was important to have local firms as involved as possible,” Mr. Kinman said.

        The new tower project was funded primarily through bond issues. Several million dollars' worth of furniture and equipment were purchased separately through annual operating budgets. And some features, including the new chapel and new artwork throughout the center, were covered by charitable donations.

        Perhaps because there were no big-name donors involved, the new hospital tower features one of the plainest names of any Greater Cincinnati hospital: “Location A.”

        The existing hospital tower — housing the emergency department, intensive-care wings, operating rooms and other services — will henceforth be known as “Location B.” Other parts of the complex get their own alphabet names.

        “Instead of trying to have a name for every building, we thought A, B, C, D, and E would be easier for families to find,” Ms. Seaquist said.

        With the new tower complete, Children's Hospital's future construction projects include renovations to the old Bethesda Oak building, the College Hill mental health campus and parts of Location B. The hospital also plans next year to demolish the original Children's Hospital building, built in 1926, to put up a research and office building.

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