VCU Health to add dozens more beds to Children’s Hospital, eyes future projects nearby

The Children’s Tower at the Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU. The year-old addition to the pediatric hospital is slated for more beds and other facilities. (BizSense file)

Just a year after opening a massive expansion of its downtown pediatric hospital, VCU Health is already looking to expand the facility’s capacity.

The health system is planning to add roughly 40 more inpatient beds to The Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU at 1000 E. Broad St.

VCU Health Interim CEO Marlon Levy confirmed the project in a recent interview, saying it is expected to be completed within the next two years.

Levy said the expansion and other new facilities come in response to demand for services the hospital has seen since it was opened to patients.

“(There are) more surgeries, more ER visits, more hospitalizations, more outpatient visits. Every metric one could possibly look to that addresses the question, ‘Are we serving more kids and their families,’ the answer is yes,” Levy said.

When the health system completed its Children’s Tower, a 16-story, 72-bed addition last year, it set aside 144,000 square feet of shell space to be used in the future. The new beds will occupy 58,000 square feet across two of those unfinished floors.

Also teed up to fill in existing shell space is a cardiac catheterization and electrophysiology lab slated to open this summer.

In the fall, VCU Health plans to open a kids activity space called the Teammates for Kids Child Life Zone. In that space, patients will be able to do art projects, create music, watch movies and do other activities. The nonprofit foundation behind the concept was founded by country musician Garth Brooks and there are more than a dozen other similar play zones in pediatric hospitals across the U.S.

“We’re looking for ways to fill (shell space) in,” Levy said. “We reached the point we’re ready for that, probably we were ready for that soon after we opened.”

The total anticipated cost of the three projects is around $75 million, according to a health system spokeswoman.

The beds expansion is planned to consist of surgical beds as well as neonatal intensive care unit bassinets. The surgical beds are subject to regulatory approval through the state’s certificate of public need program (COPN). The lab and neonatal beds slated to be added to the Children’s Tower are already approved, the spokeswoman said.

There would still be remaining shell space after the new beds, lab and kids activity space are completed. The building is also engineered to allow the construction of an additional two more stories when needed, but there aren’t immediate plans to do so.

“At some point, we’ll bring in a crane and raise the roof,” Levy said.

The Children’s Hospital of Richmond at VCU marked the completion of the $420 million Children’s Tower a little more than a year ago. It was added onto the Children’s Pavilion, an inpatient facility that was completed on the same city block in 2016. Together the two facilities make up the pediatric hospital.

As it looks to fill out the capabilities of the Children’s Hospital, VCU Health is also in the early planning stages for further development at its downtown MCV campus.

The VCU Board of Visitors was briefed last week on a handful of capital projects being planned to improve facilities on the downtown campus, most of them in the area bound by Broad Street, the interstate and North 10th and Leigh streets.

Projects that are in pre-planning include the university’s new School of Dentistry to be built at 900 Turpin St. as well as an initial phase of additional inpatient facilities to be added to the Nelson Clinic at 401 N. 11th St. and the Ambulatory Care Center at 417 N. 11th St.

A map showing potential new capital projects on the VCU Health downtown campus. Those projects shown here are in early planning and could be finalized and built in three to 15 years. (Courtesy VCU Health)

Looking further out, on a 3-to-15-year timeframe, there are plans for a new interdisciplinary health sciences academic building that would be built on the site of VCU’s current dentistry school at 520 N. 12th St. and a health system logistics center and parking facility that would be built underneath a mixed-use development across the street, VCU CFO Meredith Weiss told the university board members.

Weiss last week was named the university’s CFO after a stint in the post on an interim basis.

Also part of the long-term vision is an academic, research and office building that would be built on the site currently occupied by the West Hospital at 1200 E. Broad St., which Weiss said was built in 1940 and is considered beyond its useful life with more than $150 million in deferred maintenance.

Additionally under consideration is a new dorm near the future School of Dentistry.

Beyond those are two additional inpatient expansion projects on the campus.

The post VCU Health to add dozens more beds to Children’s Hospital, eyes future projects nearby appeared first on Richmond BizSense.