Philadelphia hospital to build its own outpatient facility
By Victoria Hurley-Schubert, Staff Writer
An update with new information about the University Medical Center of Princeton at Plainsboro project was given at the Community Connection of Princeton HealthCare annual meeting yesterday.
The majority of the plans for the $442 million project being built off Route 1 on Plainsboro Road had to do with services for children and a new medical pavilion adjoining the hospital.
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) will be building an outpatient facility and expanding its current partnership, said Barry Rabner, president and CEO of Princeton HealthCare System. CHOP provides services to children, neonatal care and consulting services in the emergency department.
”They are going to continue to do that in the new hospital and they have acquired 13 acres to build an ambulatory pavilion,” he said.
The facility will be staffed by CHOP physicians, he said. “It’s CHOP doctors working with our doctors to make decisions,” he said.
The outpatient ambulatory pavilion will offer 18 different pediatric specialists when complete, he said. Plans are being drawn up and will go through planning and zoning processes in Plainsboro.
The facility is likely to be built in two phases, the first with 25,000 square feet and then an additional 75,000 square feet for a total of 100,000 square feet.
”I think later is going to be sooner than anyone realizes because of all the interest,” said Mr. Rabner.
”Eighteen months from now seems to be a reasonable time that they will be opening. For everything you’ve seen for an adult, they have it in pediatric.”
Because of the success of the partnership with CHOP, children’s’ facilities in the acute-care hospital have been expanded.
”We’ve already redesigned the building so we created a larger inpatient pediatric unit,” said Mr. Rabner. “We’ve expanded the capabilities of the neonatal care unit and the pediatric emergency services. From the time we planned the building to today, we’ve made a change.”
The inpatient pediatric unit will be doubled in size, from six beds to 12; the neonatal unit’s capabilities as far as equipment and facility have been modified as well.
”We’ll be able to serve more-complex children,” said Mr. Rabner. “Fewer will have to go somewhere else. We are not recreating Johns Hopkins and there are still limits to what our capabilities will be in the new building.”
Mr. Rabner also said a new 147,000-square-foot medical office building that will be attached to the hospital is 71 percent leased. The building will be owned by Partners Health Trust, a joint venture of Trammell Crow Company, a West Conshohocken, Pa., real estate development company and a public pension fund advised by Bentall Kennedy, as well as physician tenants.
Ground is scheduled to be broken on that project later this week.
The Medical Arts Pavilion is scheduled for completion in May 2012 at the same time as the hospital.
”It is a $40 million, 137,915-square-foot, five-story building. It is planned to be LEED certified and is designed to be fully integrated into the hospital with physical connections at four locations, including the hospital’s main north entry, emergency department and operating suites,” said Kelly Foster, marketing analyst with Trammell Crow.
Princeton HealthCare will have a significant presence in the building, where it will operate an ambulatory surgical center, diagnostic radiology, a sleep center and other medical functions, said Ms. Foster.
Cancer care is also being expanded at the new site. Hospital officials are working on developing a partnership with the Cancer Institute of New Jersey to enhance their cancer care program, said Mr. Rabner.
”We’ve not completed those conversations and it requires medical staff and board approval,” he said. “But, it’s very exciting.”
The hospital is also exploring the possibility of bringing an endovascular interventional neuroradiology suite that would be able to put stents or clip aneurysms in the brain without going through the skull through a partnership with a nationally recognized institution.
A child care center and a medical adult day care center are proposed for the northeast corner of the site. The total square footage being proposed for the two uses would total about 23,000 square feet, said Mr. Rabner.
”The medical adult day care is a wonderful complement to all for the other senior-related services that will be on the campus,” said Mr. Rabner, mentioning there will be a geriatric floor in the hospital and a dedicated area of the emergency department for older adults. “There is a huge need for it and one of the things that attracted us to the site we picked was it was one of the fast growing regions with older adults.”
Interested parties will be announced in the next week or so, as soon as an agreement with the developer is finalized
The hospital has also hired moving planning companies FDI and Health Care Transitions. Moving plans will be ongoing until after the hospital opens, which is expected in the first quarter of 2012.
”We begin the planning process this week,” said Mr. Rabner. Good planning, including the logistics of moving objects and patients, will be key to a smooth transition next year. In addition to moving people and things, planning will also involve staff training for all the new equipment in the new facility and creating a decommissioning plan and exit strategy for the current building.
Construction continues to move along. “There about 350 people working there every day, including Saturdays,” he said.

