Jefferson Health's new $762 million ambulatory care center is on track to begin seeing patients April 15.
The 19-story, 462,000-square-foot Honickman Center in Philadelphia's Center City will be one of the nation's largest ambulatory centers, with more than 300 exam rooms, 58 infusion chairs, 10 operating rooms, six endoscopy rooms, a lab, a pharmacy and radiology services, Jefferson said Wednesday. The facility will offer care in specialties including cardiovascular, cancer, urology, rheumatology, gastroenterology and hematology.
Related: Outpatient care leads to building boom
Ambulatory care has been top-of-mind for most healthcare providers, and they are making big investments, particularly in facilities that support higher-acuity care. New York-Presbyterian, for example, spent more than $1 billion to open the 740,000-square-foot David H. Koch Center for ambulatory care at its Weill Cornell Medical Center campus in 2018. Outpatient facilities are generally cheaper for providers to operate than inpatient beds in hospitals, and an aging population is upping demand for services.
The Honickman Center will house the Honickman Breast Imaging Center, the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center, the Vickie and Jack Farber Institute for Neuroscience, the Nicoletti Kidney Transplant Center, the Jefferson Heart and Vascular Institute, the Jefferson Transplant Institute and the Jane and Leonard Korman Respiratory Institute.
The project, which broke ground in 2020, is bringing providers across 22 separate clinical locations to one place, said Dr. Catriona Harrop, a hospitalist and senior vice president at Jefferson Medical Group. Jefferson will likely use some of the former care locations for Sidney Kimmel Medical College operations, she added.
"We know how complex navigating healthcare is," Harrop said. "We worked with multiple patient groups in the design process for the building to make sure that we were taking everybody's needs into consideration."
To help fund the project, the health system raised nearly $100 million from more than 2,000 philanthropic donors, Harrop said. The Honickman family, longtime benefactors to the system, made a gift of $50 million in 2022.
Jefferson projects the center will see more than 1,000 patients per day, Harrop said.
Philadelphia-based Jefferson has weathered financial challenges in recent years, including labor pressures and inflation. Last year, the system restructured operations and consolidated five divisions into three. In its fiscal 2023, the health system reduced losses by about $117 million year-over-year.
This story has been updated because incorrect information was provided.
