Mount Sinai Medical Center is working toward completing the first phase of its four-story, 112,000-square-foot Westchester emergency center at 8200 SW Eighth St., its second hospital in South Florida.
Phase one, which costs about $150 million and includes the shell and core of the main building along with a freestanding emergency department on the ground floor, is under construction.
Matt Barnard, who serves as Mount Sinai’s associate vice president of facility planning and construction, said workers “are probably 75% through the construction of the first phase.” In addition, he said that Mount Sinai primarily finances internally.
“Phase one, we’re targeting a June temporary certificate of occupancy that will allow us to start bringing in all of the equipment and furniture, etc.,” he said. “And we are, you know, Q4 [going] live.”
The focal point when it comes to the first phase, Mr. Barnard said, is outpatient imaging and the emergency department.
“The size of the ED is 24 bays, 44 inpatient beds at a time, so it’s a robust facility, but it’s a micro-hospital,” he said. “It’s intended to fill the need for an area that is previously underserved from a healthcare perspective, so we are balancing the need for that specific location with the size of the campus and we’ve sited it in such a way that we’re being as efficient as possible so we can bring the greatest amount of services to that location.
“It’s kind of a give and take, right,” he continued. “We could have had more inpatient beds, but that means offering a more limited range of services, and so we wanted to ensure that the nationally recognized standard of care that Mount Sinai provides on Miami Beach was going to find its way to Westchester, and so we wanted to strike that right balance that we think we have.”
Though he said he didn’t know the specific target number for recruiting staff, Mr. Barnard said there’s flexibility between campuses.
“I think that as an organization we have been steadily recruiting throughout all of our individual satellites in the main campus and this is our most recent focus, but there’s flexibility between campuses for staff as well,” he said.
The other phases are still being designed.
“There’s going to be a hospital buildout on the upper floors. We have a surgical platform that’s very robust,” Mr. Barnard said. “We’ve got 44 patient beds that are going to go in there… We’re also working towards the design of a parking garage that will go onto the campus as well, and then some outpatient services associated with the building for the parking garage… We’re at the same level of development, we’re in design development, which means we’re about two-thirds of the way through.”
As previously reported by Miami Today, the decision to join the Westchester community is a result of patients wishing for a greater presence from Mount Sinai.
“I mean, this is a project that I think we’re uniquely excited about,” Mr. Barnard said. “It’ll become the second full hospital campus that Mount Sinai is offering to the community. Not only is it a significant milestone and growth for ourselves, but we see it as a pivotal change for the surrounding community. Access to healthcare is going to be significantly improved and travel distances reduced.”
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