DALLAS – The University of Texas System Board of Regents has approved plans for a new state-of-the-art hospital at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.
The $800 million project now will go to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board for its review and final approval.
The new facility would replace University Hospital-St. Paul, which has become too costly to maintain and renovate as an academic medical center, according to Daniel K. Podolsky, MD, president of UT Southwestern.
The new 12-story, 424-bed facility is scheduled to open in 2015.
“With the necessity of constructing this new replacement hospital came the ability to create a design that will enable us to provide patient-centric care as well as integrate our education, research and clinical missions,” said Podolsky. “It incorporates forward-looking approaches to patient care and embeds appropriate space to support clinical and translational research as well as education and training.”
In addition to the hospital, the project includes supporting facilities and a thermal energy plant.
Construction of the 1.3 million-square-foot project will start in March 2011 with completion anticipated in late 2014. University Hospital-St. Paul will remain fully operational until the new facility opens.
The new hospital’s design seeks to optimize the experience for patients and their families, said John Warner, MD, associate professor of internal medicine at UT Southwestern. Each patient room will include a seating area for families and visitors, refrigerators, bedside and dimmer controls for lighting, multimedia options and patient Internet access.
Each floor will include “rounding rooms” where healthcare teams can discuss patient care, family conference rooms for private consultations with physicians, conference rooms and teaching spaces,research space for clinical and translational research activities and on-call rooms and facilities for physicians.
The new hospital will be funded through a mix of revenue bonds, funds generated by university clinics and hospitals and philanthropy. No public funds or tax revenues will be used to build the new facility, Podolsky said.
