Huntsville Hospital has received the thumbs up from the State Health Planning and Development Agency to construct a new $150 million expansion for the healthcare facility.
Plans call for a 154,000-square-foot, five-story addition to Huntsville Hospital’s Madison Street Tower.
Huntsville Hospital is a public, not-for-profit, 881-bed healthcare facility that is the second largest hospital in Alabama. It is the flagship facility of the Huntsville Hospital Health System.
The facility is also one of the Huntsville Hospital Health System’s 14 hospitals across North Alabama and in Tennessee.
“This project is our investment to keep up with the core critical care capacity we need to care for the growing North Alabama region,” says Jeff Samz, CEO of the Huntsville Hospital Health System.
Huntsville Hospital says the construction project will create 120 new private patient beds, with 70 of those private rooms replacing double-occupancy rooms and patient rooms lost in the construction to connect the hallways.
Consequently, the construction will raise the total number of patient beds at Huntsville Hospital to 931.
“We’re delighted to have the additional capacity and to end the practice of semi-private hospital rooms because no one wants to share a hospital room with another person,” Samz says.
The expansion project will also include:
- A neuro intensive care unit for patients suffering from strokes and other neurosurgical conditions
- A cardiothoracic intensive care unit paid for with a $10 million private, philanthropic gift, which the hospital says is the largest in its history
- A “new and improved” emergency room vehicle entrance
- Three floors for acute medical care.
“If you’re sick enough to need all the specialized physicians that only exist in Huntsville, in North Alabama, this is the space we need to take care of the community,” Samz says.
Moreover, Samz says, “If you look at the additional patients we’ll care for and then look at our typical staffing ratios, of how many staff we have per bed, we expect this to generate at least 350 new jobs for the region.”
The hospital will use the Birmingham-based firm Robins & Morton, which constructed the Madison Street Tower in 2006, to be the general contractor on the current expansion project. The hospital estimates that the construction project will take two years to complete.
