New Valleywise Health teaching hospital breaks ground

A new chapter in the 140-year history of the county’s public health safety net system began as Valleywise Health held a ceremonial groundbreaking for its new medical center at the Roosevelt campus. Built by Kitchell and designed by the Cuningham Group and EYP Health, the state-of-the-art medical center will be constructed adjacent to the current medical center and will continue to serve the healthcare needs of the community during construction.

The new hospital tower, located at 2601 E. Roosevelt Street in Phoenix, will be approximately 673,000 square feet, 10 stories tall and will feature the same services for which the health care system has come to be known.

Funding for the new medical center came as a result of the resounding response of voters approving Proposition 480, which provided Valleywise Health (formerly Maricopa Integrated Health System) more than $900 million to transform the Valley’s public teaching hospital and safety net system of care.  Beyond the world-class healthcare services Valleywise provides to the community, it is also the state’s only public teaching hospital. This new facility will only further the ability for future physicians and nurses to get the training they need through state-of-the-art devices and upgraded amenities.

“At the core of all we do, we keep the patient, their care and experience top of mind,” said Steve Purves, CEO at Valleywise Health. “In building this new medical center, we are honoring the request of our community members and are so proud to take this monumental leap to serve the healthcare needs of those who need it most and thankful to all those who made this possible.”

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From left: Maricopa County Special Health Care District Board of Directors: Chairman Mark Dewane; J. Woodfin Thomas, director, District 4; Mary Harden, director, District 1; and District Medical Group President and CEO Kote Chundu; Steve Purves, president and CEO, Valleywise Health; Mary Rose Wilcox, vice chairman, Maricopa County Special Health Care District; and Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego break ground on the 673,000-square-foot Valleywise Health Medical Center in Phoenix.

 

Kitchell project honored with coveted ASHE Vista award

The American Hospital Association’s American Society for Health Care Engineering (ASHE) has presented a prestigious Vista Award to Kitchell and others who were part of designing and building the UC San Diego Jacobs Medical Center in La Jolla, Calif.

“This project was and still is a milestone project for Kitchell,” said Kitchell Contractors President Steve Whitworth. “For many years Jacobs was the largest healthcare project in San Diego County, and the collaboration lessons learned from that experience reverberate throughout our projects today.”

The Vista Awards are not design awards, but rather recognize the significance of collaboration, communication and teamwork in creating optimal healthcare environments. It is considered the ultimate national recognition in healthcare building and engineering. Jacobs Medical Center was honored in the category of New Construction.

The project team’s transformational approach facilitated an environment of risk-taking and supporting each other. Team members who didn’t adapt to the project’s high-performance team culture were moved to more structured roles, if necessary. Innovation began at the earliest phases, with end-users including patients, family members, medical and hospital staff providing insights and continuous feedback that informed the design and environments.

The Jacobs Medical Center project transformed an existing community hospital into a world-class academic institution. The five-year, $972.9 million project encompassed four distinct phases: enabling projects to prepare the site for development, building an award-winning LEED Gold, 40,000-square-foot central utility plant, selectively renovating the existing community hospital and ultimately constructing the 245-bed, 10-story patient tower.

“This is the ultimate reward for UC San Diego Jacobs Medical Center and the project team,” said UC San Diego Senior Director of Project Management Randy Leopold. “It proves what a true high-performing team can accomplish when it understands the bigger picture and is empowered to ask questions, address challenges, take risks and continually innovate. It’s also a much-deserved validation from the industry, recognizing the thousands of individuals who poured their hearts and souls into creating something in our community that is changing lives.”

The award was presented at the opening session of the 2019 International Summit and Exhibition for Health Facility Planning, Design and Construction™, which was held in Phoenix this year. The two other winners were UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, Mass (Renovation) and Lancaster General Hospital in Pennsylvania (Infrastructure).

Article originally appeared in Arizona Business Magazine: https://azbigmedia.com/kitchell-project-honored-with-coveted-ashe-vista-award/