Copyright M Live Michigan
ANN ARBOR, MI — A long-awaited $920 million University of Michigan hospital will soon open to patients. Michigan Medicine administrators unveiled the 12-story D. Dan and Betty Kahn Health Care Pavilion, 1513 E. Ann St., in a ribbon-cutting ceremony Wednesday, Nov. 12. The hospital will add 690,000 square feet, including 20 surgical and three interventional radiology suites, to the university health system’s main medical campus, Michigan Medicine officials said. “There’s a lot of demand for the services of our wonderful teams here at Michigan Medicine, and so having more inpatient capacity to allow us to enhance access in the safest environment with the best patient experience required some more inpatient space,” said Dr. David Miller, chief executive officer of Michigan Medicine. Miller said the new hospital will start taking in patients by the end of the year. Medical staff plan to support patients in intensive care, as well as lead specialty services for neuroscience, cardiovascular and thoracic care, among other specialties. When all is complete, the hospital will add a total of 176 new inpatient bed licenses to the Ann Arbor medical campus, the university reported. The hospital contains 264 nearly identical single-patient rooms on the eighth through twelfth floors, which serve as the patient care floors. Every room has a bed lift, patient communication board and light green walls, among other features. The facility’s inpatient rooms are designed to be divided into multiple rooms if the hospital needs more space, Rusty Hudson, a construction project engineering lead at Michigan Medicine, said. The facility separates patient care floors based on medical conditions. The eighth floor is the stroke and epilepsy monitoring unit. Wednesday, the front lobby became increasingly crowded while more excited attendees entered the building. As revealed on a media tour, inpatient rooms wrap around the eighth floor. Digital screens filled an epilepsy monitoring room. One corner has a staff respite room containing tall green revolving seats and a large whiteboard. On the sixth floor, attendees could walk into a neural operating room full of medical tools and equipment. Windows overlook the larger Ann Arbor landscape. Fall foliage filled several windowpanes, and Hudson said viewers from the twelfth floor can see downtown Detroit. Patients will move to the new Pavilion from UM University Hospital and Samuel & Jean Frankel Cardiovascular Center, Hudson said. “It is just another hospital within the system that is one of the best in the world,” Hudson said. The facility’s 20 operating rooms, on multiple floors for the first time at a Michigan medicine facility, will have 128 incremental full-time employees. “It’s been a journey from recognizing the need for the community consistent with our mission, to defining a place where multidisciplinary, high complexity care can be done in a safe and comfortable environment, to the reality that we’re now celebrating today,” Miller said. Julie Ishak, chief nurse executive at UM Health, said about 1,000 employees, including those who are new to Michigan Medicine, will work in the facility. “Regardless of what building you’re in, whether you’re in the Pavilion or you’re in our university hospital or children’s and women’s hospital, the care is superb no matter where you’re getting your care,” Ishak said. She said the pavilion is “designed for the era that we’re in now.” This involves having “everything at your fingertips to be able to always be in front of the patient.” “One of the wonderful things about UM is people want to come here for care and this allows us to provide expanded access,” Ishak said. “Michigan Medicine, in general, is a destination site for many highly specialized services.” Opening the new hospital took nearly a decade, Miller said. Known as the Pavilion Hospital project since construction began in October 2019, the facility was scheduled to be open in fall 2024, but the COVID-19 pandemic delayed work, UM officials previously said. Benefactors D. Dan and Betty Kahn donated $50 million to the university in 2022 to support the new hospital. Read more: Donors gift $50M for new name of University of Michigan ‘Pavilion’ hospital A $35-million parking structure will also sit on Zina Pitcher Place near Kahn Pavilion. It will provide 570 parking spaces to support the increased patient and visitor flow from the new medical facility, officials previously said. The new parking structure is scheduled for completion in winter 2026, officials previously said. The new structure would be connected to the nearby Ann Street Parking Structure. While attendees gathered for the ribbon-cutting ceremony, over 15 Washtenaw County residents protested outside the hospital in opposition to the university’s August decision to end gender-affirming care for minors. Protesters held signs that read, “Whose care is next...?” and “Protect trans kids.”
