Medical center provides flexible design in high-growth area of Michigan

The medical center, located near Detroit, is designed to expand as the community grows.

Photo courtesy of Ascension Health

Ascension health system, St. Louis, recently opened a new $13.5 million, 60,000-square-foot outpatient facility in Howell, Mich., one of the fastest-growing areas in the Midwestern state.

Ascension Medical Center, a new ambulatory care center near Detroit, will provide access to primary and special health care programs and services originating from Ascension’s Providence-Providence Park Hospital, which has campuses in Southfield and Novi.

“This new outpatient medical center will expand health care options for residents in Howell and surrounding communities, providing families with greater access to primary and specialty care,” says Gwen MacKenzie, Ascension Healthcare senior vice president and Michigan Ministry market executive.    

Services include diagnostic imaging with 3-D mammography, lab, physical therapy and occupational health.

Photo courtesy of Ascension Health

The new outpatient center will offer primary care services including family practice, internal medicine, OB-GYN and pediatrics. Specialties include cardiology, pulmonology and audiology. 

Other services include diagnostic imaging with 3-D mammography, lab, physical therapy and occupational health. The center also is home to an urgent care center open 10 hours a day, seven days a week.

 “We planned the Ascension Medical Center in Livingston County so that it could be expanded in three phases to respond to the needs of a growing community,” says Eric Carmichael, principal, MedCraft Healthcare Real Estate LLC, a national developer of ambulatory care and medical office buildings.  

“To accomplish this, we were strategic in locating services to provide flexibility and adjacency for future development,” Carmichael says.  

Physical therapy is adjacent to the urgent care center to provide soft space for future urgent care growth. Diagnostic imaging is close to the expansion zones to provide convenient access to new services such as ambulatory surgery, Carmichael adds.

Registration and support functions were consolidated to provide patients ease of access and minimize the duplication of non-revenue-generating spaces. Independent physician offices were located for integration into adjacent Ascension Medical Group offices over time, he explains.   

Physical therapy is adjacent to the urgent care center to provide soft space for future urgent care growth.

Photo courtesy of Ascension Health

MacKenzie says the new medical center provides patients in Livingston County communities a convenient entry point to St. John Providence’s Centers of Excellence and its heart and cancer care, orthopedics services and neurosciences program.

MedCraft engaged Diekema Hamann for architectural and engineering services and the CSM Group for construction.   

Ascension is the largest nonprofit health system in the U.S. and the world's largest Catholic health system, providing care in 24 states and the District of Columbia.

In other health care facility news:

• Development is underway for a 56,000-square-foot, two-story ambulatory care medical office building on the San Antonio Regional Hospital campus in Upland, Calif., that will include a City of Hope community cancer center.

  PMB [Pacific Medical Buildings] is providing program management, development and design management services for the project on behalf of San Antonio Regional Hospital. The new building is part of a larger, campuswide project that involves construction of a new four-story patient tower that opened in January.

• National architecture firm Shepley Bulfinch announced the opening of a new hybrid operating room at Bridgeport (Conn.) Hospital, a member of Yale New Haven Health.

  The new 1,500-square-foot operating room combines integrated technology and sophisticated imaging facilities into a state-of-the-art operating theater that will be used for cardiac, vascular and thoracic surgery.

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