DETROIT — Henry Ford Health has broken ground on a 1.2 million square-foot expansion to Henry Ford Hospital, an 877-bed tertiary care hospital in the New Center residential district of Detroit. The $2.2 billion development will be anchored by a new hospital facility situated directly across the street from the legacy campus, which will remain in operation.
The new facility will include a 20-story patient tower that will offer 432 individual patient rooms and 28 new operating rooms. Each room will feature touch-screen TVs and voice activation technology for both patients and care teams, as well as dedicated space for visitors. Five floors of the patient tower will be dedicated to specialized ICU rooms, which will provide cardiovascular, neurological and other forms of care.
Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, a physical medicine and rehabilitation research hospital formerly known as Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, has partnered with Henry Ford Health and will occupy three of the top floors of the patient tower. The partnership was made possible through a $130 million investment by the Gilbert Family Foundation, according to Henry Ford Health.
The Gilbert Family Foundation, a Detroit-based private nonprofit foundation founded by Dan and Jennifer Gilbert, also created a $10 million fund to support Detroit residents with limited or no insurance coverage for rehabilitation care.
Additional plans for the expansion include a 185,000-square-foot shared services building — which will house the hospital’s kitchen, loading dock and sterile processing — a 1,500-space parking structure and a 46,000-square-foot Central Energy Hub that will heat and cool the new facilities through a hot and chilled water pump system.
Additionally, the project will more than double the size of the emergency department to 75,000 square feet. The department will also be equipped with 100 new flexible treatment spaces.
“I believe every major American city needs a premier academic medical campus,” says Dr. Steven Kalkanis, executive vice president and CEO of Henry Ford Hospital and CEO of Henry Ford Medical Group.
The expanded Henry Ford Hospital will open its doors to patients in 2029.
Henry Ford Health employs more than 33,000 team members, including nearly 6,000 physicians and researchers from the Henry Ford Medical Group, Henry Ford Physicians Network and Jackson Health Network. The health system owns and operates five acute care hospitals, three behavioral health facilities and 250 clinics and retail locations.
Last week, Henry Ford Health announced it will be closing its joint venture with Ascension Michigan on Sept. 30 and operate as a combined company starting Oct. 1, resulting in Ascension Michigan’s eight hospitals in southeast Michigan operating under the Henry Ford Health banner.
— Channing Hamilton