CINCINNATI (WKRC) - A new critical care building is coming to Cincinnati Children’s, and although it won’t be open until the fall of 2021, the excitement has already begun.
“It’s amazing and it’s really been an honor to engage our patients, family, and staff,” assistant vice president of design, construction, and space planning Michael Browning said.
The final beam of the building is set to go up within the next few weeks, and before it does, Cincinnati Children’s is giving patients, family members, doctors, and nurses the chance to sign it.
“It’s a simple gesture but it has been powerful to watch our folks come together, stand shoulder together and sign beams,” Browning said. “It’s just a neat event to say they were part of something and have a tangible representation of that.”
Thirty-five patient families have been involved in the creation of the building since day one. They were picked to participate in monthly focus groups, giving feedback on everything from lighting to design.
“This is really an opportunity for us to re-engineer how we do many things here from the ground up,” Browning said.
The critical care building will be more than 630,000 square feet with 249 beds. It will include pediatric, cardiac, and neonatal intensive care units.
“We’re seeing more complex patients with more medical needs, requiring bigger medical teams to take care of them,” Browning said. “The space we had previously, which was opened in 1993, was great but functionally obsolete for the types of critical patients we were trying to see.”
The project is about 40% complete and will cost about $600 million altogether.
source
