MetroHealth to open key piece of makeover

The MetroHealth Glick Center — the centerpiece of the health system's nearly $1 billion campus transformation — stands in glimmering, stark contrast to the antiquated hospital towers it was built to replace.

Opening Saturday, Nov. 5, the hospital's 11 floors offer 316 private patient rooms, each with the ability to flex into double rooms during a surge. It stands next to a 3-acre park, a glimpse of the full 12 acres of park space planned once demolition of the old hospital and other buildings being replaced makes way for the full vision of MetroHealth's new campus.

The new hospital offers families, patients and caregivers a very different experience than the current facility, starting with the front door, said Walter Jones, senior vice president of campus transformation.

"The welcoming nature of it, I think, is the first thing to now greet our families and patients properly in a healthcare environment," he said. "To give them a sense that, you're in a warm receiving space, you're gonna get good care here. I mean, to the extent the building can communicate that, I think our main entry space starts to do that right off the bat."

The hospital took three-and-a-half years to build and is opening on time and "well within" the $767 million budget, Jones said, noting that the total also includes the future demolition of the towers, scheduled for 2024. MetroHealth completed the sale of $946 million in hospital revenue bonds in 2017 to fund the campus transformation.

The hospital is named in honor of JoAnn and Bob Glick, who donated $42 million to MetroHealth, the largest gift in the system's history, to support programs aimed at reversing health inequities and improving community health in Greater Cleveland.

The Glick Center's amenities also include the Nemat K. Boutros Meditation Room, Family Resource Center, Nature Gift Shop, on-site dining and more.

The project involved 26 local firms, 10 of which are minority- or women-owned businesses. Turner Construction Co. led construction management, and HGA led design planning, architecture and engineering for the project, while Hammes Co., a healthcare facilities development company, served as the owner's rep.

The "corner offices" of the patient floors are dedicated to families and caregivers: each have two family spaces for loved ones to take a moment but stay near the patient, and two break rooms with floor-to-ceiling windows.

The staff break rooms were deliberate choices and differ from what these spaces have traditionally looked like in hospitals: often internal, without natural light and can "look like they're leftover spaces," Jones said.

Offering relaxation for staff, many of whom struggle with burnout, is incredibly important, he said, pointing to the wellness rooms that also are in every unit. These are small, carpeted rooms with a reclining chair that offer privacy and a quiet space to relax. They also can be used as a lactation space.

"Staff need as much ability to take moments where they can get away, they can decompress, they can exhale, you know, for the moment," he said. "They realize their duty; they realize what they need to do."

In the center of the units are large conference rooms with glass walls, offering the most convenient way for teams to quickly gather to discuss care, Jones said, noting there are additional meeting spaces with more privacy available. The clear rooms work in the reverse as well, offering families comfort to see that the caregivers are nearby.

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Plans for a new hospital were first announced in 2014, a few months after the aging infrastructure of the old facility was put to the test — and failed. A polar vortex delivered subzero temperatures and brutal winds to the region and burst pipes and flooded rooms to MetroHealth.

Over the years, MetroHealth president and CEO Dr. Akram Boutros has recounted sharing with business and civic leaders the story of the polar vortex and hearing that MetroHealth's hospital was good enough for "those people."

"These statements demonstrated that there was a significant lack of understanding of MetroHealth's critical role in our community, and they were emblematic of the attitude that some of our neighbors deserved less than others," Boutros said in prepared remarks for the Glick Center ribbon-cutting. "In a way, we owe thanks to these people. They got us charged up. We were angry and determined to prove them wrong. Quickly, we designed and built two new floors on top of our Emergency Department. And we financed it on our own."

The Critical Care Pavilion, a 100,000-square-foot vertical extension with 85 Intensive Care Unit Rooms above the existing Level I Trauma Center, opened in 2016 as the first piece of MetroHealth's main campus transformation.

The discussions to replace the towers quickly grew to encompass the entire 52-acre campus on West 25th Street, Jones said. Leaders recognized that by nature of the project, the campus would need to be reconfigured and rearranged. That led into discussions of how to best deliver care not as a health and hospital system but as a health and wellness system.

"It became more of a catalyst for a much broader community transformation, and that started then getting itself input into the actions of the organization," Jones said. "First with the recognition of population health, the creation of the Institute for H.O.P.E., the development of our private, community development corporation CCH, and being able now to have a direct impact in terms of elements and the surrounding community."

In collaboration with public, private, nonprofit and civic partners, the CCH Development Corp., formed by MetroHealth aims to accelerate the pace of revitalization of West 25th Street and the surrounding neighborhoods. Jones also pointed to MetroHealth's Institute for H.O.P.E. (Health, Opportunity, Partnership and Empowerment), which aims to tackle the social drivers of health, and to Via Sana, a health and housing project with 72 affordable apartments, spearheaded by Cleveland-based developer NRP Group in collaboration with MetroHealth.

Also part of the campus transformation is what's known as the Apex building, an outpatient facility expected to be completed in late 2023 with the first patients seen in the first quarter of 2024. The demolition of the current outpatient buildings on campus will follow, allowing space for the full park to open in 2025. MetroHealth anticipates the RFP for park design to go out before the end of the year.

"The transformation piece, if you will, started to expand and still continues to expand beyond that," he said. "And I think that's really a key thing over my eight years — but you've gotta remember it's Dr. Boutros' 10 — that you know, that has grown significantly in terms of what the vision, how the vision of MetroHealth, and its role in the community as a corporate citizen in this corner of the Clark Fulton neighborhood has, you know, manifested itself over this period of time."

This story first appeared in our sister publication, Crain's Cleveland Business.