Aventura Hospital Seeks Approval For Major Expansion

After recently opening its expanded emergency room, Aventura Hospital & Medical Center will seek city approval for even bigger growth with new patient beds and a parking garage.
On June 14, the city commission was scheduled to vote on the proposal by the hospital, which is owned by HCA Corp. (NYSE: HCA). It has requested a larger setback from the street, increased density and less open space in order to accommodate its site plan.
The 407-bed Aventura Hospital & Medical Center is located on the 19.7-acre site at 20900 Biscayne Blvd. It recently completed a $75.6 million emergency department expansion with 22 new rooms. The hospital was designated a Level II trauma center last year.
Aventura Hospital’s new expansion plan calls for a three-story building of 86,900 square feet for patient care plus a 506-space parking garage. The patient care building would be on the east side of the existing south tower and feature 60 patient rooms, waiting rooms and a lounge.
During construction of the building in what is now a parking lot, the hospital would lease off-site parking for its employees and provide them with shuttle service until the new parking garage is done, according to the application.
The patient tower was designed by is Earl Swensson Associates in Nashville, Tennessee and the parking garage was designed by R.R. Simmons in Tampa.
An official from HCA couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

“The proposed improvements will enable the hospital to expand its services and continue to provide outstanding health benefits to Aventura residents and the surrounding communities,” Shutts & Bowen attorney Alexander I. Tachmes, stated in the hospital’s application to the city. “The addition will provide additional beds that need to be connected to the main hospital building on the east campus to provide efficient patient care and maximize the use of resources, including services, equipment and staff. It will also enhance patient comfort, safety and security by allowing easy access between departments without forcing patients to leave the building.”

Source: SFBJ
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Game-Changing Design With The User In Mind

While wanting to be healthy is nothing new, the way health and wellness are managed has evolved considerably. Patient-centered care with a more personalized focus on treatment of the whole person is resulting in improved patient outcomes and increased staff effectiveness and morale. This also helps administrators meet key safety goals, reduce costs, and increase market share.
As an example, UT Southwestern Medical Center opened its radiation oncology center in early April. The William P. Clements Jr. University Hospital Radiation Oncology Building—part of the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center and an outpatient clinic of William P. Clements Jr. University Hospital—is a three-story, 63,000-square-foot structure and the largest individual facility for radiation oncology in North Texas. Perkins+Will’s Dallas office provided master planning, architectural design, interior design and furniture, fixtures, and equipment services.
Intended to foster well-being, enhance comfort and safety in a patient-centered care system, the design streamlines workflow, adapts to technology and change, supports sustainability, and enables treatment accuracy through advancing technologies. In addition, the layout creates an environment of flexible spaces that accommodate the care teams with fewer walls and more shared spaces, improving productivity while facilitating focus, collaboration, and organized work.
Located on an elevated site offering views north to the UTSW campus, the expressive architecture pays homage to the consistent academic architecture of the existing campus while blending high-tech, comfort, technology, and warmth, satisfying both academia and patient expectations alike. The user experience is accented with warm interior materials, consistent daylighting and intentional views, and access to exterior gardens. Patients and staff alike can find solace, collaboration and comfort seamlessly throughout the facility.
Likewise, Baylor Scott & White Health—the largest not-for-profit health care system in Texas—together with the Dallas Cowboys, broke ground in 2016 on a game-changing facility that is located at The Star in Frisco, home of the new Dallas Cowboys World Headquarters.
Slated for completion in early 2018 and named Baylor Scott & White Sports Therapy & Research at The Star, the 300,000 square-foot campus is expected to become a nationally recognized model for the holistic treatment of physically active individuals, aimed to harness the best techniques in injury prevention, performance, recovery, education, and research. It is also a first-of-its kind collaboration between an NFL team, a health system, and a school district (Frisco Independent School District). Perkins+Will is leading the design of the sports performance, research, and wellness center.
The nine-story building will be a showcase of health and wellness on the 91-acre campus. In addition to outpatient physical therapy and rehabilitation, sports psychology and a brain injury program, sports nutrition, orthopedics, cardiology, surgery, urgent care, medical office space, and a pharmacy, the facility will house a street-level Sports Performance Center powered by Fusionetics that features an indoor/outdoor playing field, basketball court, and training, research, and rehabilitation areas. It will also have an imaging center developed in collaboration with General Electric (GE).
The design invokes a sense of strength, durability and precision—attributes of both the athletes who will seek treatment there and the sports physicians who will provide care there. The glass and metal building is designed to give patients clear views and easy access to the outdoors, as well as provide views to the activity within for the campus community.
Lastly, in a plan to provide the appropriate mix of diagnostic and treatment services, the University Health System of San Antonio approved design and planning for the construction of a new trauma tower at University Hospital. The Perkins+Will design, in conjunction with Garza/Bomberger & Associates and RVK Architects, included larger patient rooms and plenty of natural light. Design of the interior spaces and functional layout moves staff and patients in an efficient manner. The new hospital is twice as big as the old one.
Architecture does, indeed, affect emotional state. Patient-centered healing environments should facilitate compassionate and dignified human interactions, enhance comfort, and create spaces where families and friends of the patient are considered part of the care team. In doing so, this becomes the convergence of doing what is most cost effective with what is best for all parties involved.
Source: DMagazine
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VA Clinic Trades Fetches $449 PSF

The William “Bill” Kling Veterans Clinic in Sunrise just sold for $49.7 million to an affiliate of the Scottsdale, Arizona-based, publicly-traded real estate investment firm Healthcare Trust of America, records show.
The property at 9800 West Commercial Boulevard stretches 9.3 acres with a 110,714-square-foot building built between 2008 and 2009. The Heathcare Trust Delaware affiliate, HTA-VA Sunrise Mob, LLC, paid $449 per square foot for the building.
Indianapolis-based commercial real estate company Duke Realty was the seller. Records show Duke Realty bought the clinic for $36.3 million, or $328 per square foot, in 2012.
The veterans clinic is near the anticipated community project Metropica that the Sunrise commission approved last year. The project will have 370,000 square feet of retail space, a 345-unit apartment building, and the rights to a 240-room hotel and 140,000 square feet of Class A office space, in west Broward. One of its first of eight residential towers, Metropica One, scored a $65 million construction loan, last month.
Source: The Real Deal
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Why This Health System Leases Space To Donut Shops

Various health systems nationwide are embracing the “retail opportunity,” allowing restaurants, pharmacies and clothiers to lease ample space within their hospitals and outpatient buildings.
That’s the case at Chicago-based Northwestern Memorial HealthCare, according to Gina Weldy, vice president of operations and real estate at the health system. But Northwestern’s approach may strike some other systems as odd, given that Northwestern also leases space to “unhealthy” places, like donut shops.
Northwestern is a seven-hospital health system located in the Chicagoland area. The health system currently has more than 100 outpatient sites and about 70,000 square feet of retail space—all of which looks similarly to how “a normal retail environment might look,” Weldy said.
Usually, Northwestern leases to “fresh, healthy concepts,” Weldy explained—but not always. And the strategy has worked out marvelously for the health system.
In general it’s been incredibly successful,” Weldy said during a panel discussion at BOMA International’s recent 2017 Medical Office Buildings and Healthcare Real Estate Conference in Denver. “We have seen the return that we anticipated.”

Respite and Amenitites

When originally deciding how to approach retail, Northwestern had a lot to consider.

“We had a lot of really rigorous conversations about what we could align with, and what would be successful,” Weldy explained.

The health system wanted its retail tenants to provide a respite for hospital patients, but also “an important amenity for [hospital] employees, who may only have 30 minutes at lunch to get things done,” Weldy said.
Luckily, convincing retail partners to come on board wasn’t very difficult, as Northwestern’s downtown Chicago campus offers them the density of midtown Manhattan.

“While you may not perceive yourselves as being in a dense environment like we are, if you actually measure the density within your buildings, there’s a significant retail capture opportunity,” Weldy explained.

Northwestern knew that nobody really desires to go into a hospital to “have a retail experience,” so it cut doors in the outer walls of its buildings to lease to places like restaurants and a full-service Walgreen’s, Weldy added. This further helped Northwestern’s 5-block campus blend into the larger Chicago neighborhood.

“We helped the neighborhood forget our size,” Weldy said.

Employees reacted so well to the new retail spots that Northwestern ended up closing its “heavily subsidized” employee cafeteria at its downtown Chicago hospital and replaced it with four healthy restaurants.
Northwestern also leases space to a couple of donut shops, though leaders feel justified in this decision.

“If a family is going through chemotherapy with their 3-year-old, they don’t really care right now about the healthfulness of the food—they’re going to give the child whatever makes them comfortable that day,” Weldy said.

Source: Medical Office News
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Proton Therapy Center Lands $81 Million Financing For Delray Beach Facility

proton therapy center rendering

For years, hospitals and physician groups have proposed building a proton therapy center in Palm Beach County. Those plans never panned out, presumably because the cancer-treatment centers are prohibitively expensive.
But a plan for a proton therapy center at Tenet Healthcare’s Delray Medical Center remains on track. Proton International of Louisville, Kentucky, this month closed on an $81.3 million bond issue that will pay for the 40,000-square-foot facility, according to a mortgage.
The facility will be open for photon patients in 2018 and proton patients in 2019, Proton International said.
With proton therapy, doctors aim a high-speed stream of positively charged particles at a cancerous tumor. Unlike chemotherapy, which bombards a patient’s body with radiation, protons release more of their energy into the tumor and nowhere else, thus saving healthy tissue.
Seen as a safer alternative to chemotherapy, protons are used to treat tumors of the brain and central nervous system, spine, head and neck, lung, prostate, liver, gastrointestinal tract and colon, and some breast tumors. Because children are especially sensitive to radiation therapy, doctors often use protons to treat juvenile cancer.
In early 2012, Boca Raton Regional Hospital said it would spend $120 million to build a proton center on Glades Road. At the same time, South Florida Radiation Oncology was scouting locations for its own proton facility. Neither project was built.
Source: Palm Beach Post
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