Business suits and scrubs mingled with the occasional parka as rain threatened to put a damper on a standing-room-only groundbreaking ceremony at UF Health on Friday afternoon.
The afternoon ceremony celebrated construction on the $415 million UF Health Heart and Vascular Hospital and the UF Health Neuromedicine Hospital, which will be completed in 2018.
UF President Kent Fuchs, one of the speakers at the ceremony, described the hospitals as a kind of medical miracle.
“Today marks a bold step for UF and UF Health,” Fuchs said.
The two hospitals will be in one roughly 521,000-square-foot building with a family lounge connecting them. It will also connect to the pre-existing cancer hospital by a bridge that will house a post-operative care center.
The new hospitals will feature more space for the families of patients, including sleep areas in the patients’ rooms, according to a video shown during the ceremony.
“So when they’re here with loved ones, they’re away from their homes, and this will be a nice environment for them to at least be more comfortable,” said Thomas Beaver, chief of cardiovascular surgery.
The hospitals will feature state-of-the-art technology, such as five hybrid operating rooms that can surgeons can use for both open procedures and minimally invasive ones, Beaver said. There will also be two MRI operating suites for neurosurgery.
The new facility’s glitz and glamour was designed to match the talent of the UF Health staff, interim CEO Edward Jimenez said.
“If we truly want to make that signature mark, the facility has to match the talent, has to match the commitment,” Jimenez said. “It’s not about the building, it’s not the brick and mortars.”
The hospitals were designed to be convenient for patients by providing as many services as possible in one place, said UF Health President David Guzick.
“Our goal is always to put the patient at the center of everything we do,” Guzick said.
The hospitals will provide 216 new patient rooms, he said. There will also be around 20 new operating rooms.
The project was funded by philanthropy, reserve funding and borrowing money by selling bonds, Guzick said.
The expansion is expected to open in 2018, said Brad Pollitt, vice president of facilities. Similar projects at peer hospitals have taken as long as 10 years to complete, Pollitt said.
“The leadership here were all committed to making this work,” he said. “We’re doing a good job, and we’re doing it quickly.”
[A version of this story ran on page 6 on 1/26/2015 under the headline “UF Health hospitals break ground"]
