The Daily Pennsylvanian is a student-run nonprofit.

Please support us by disabling your ad blocker on our site.

For Penn's crowded hospitals, a new building may provide some much-needed breathing room.

The University Board of Trustees unanimously approved the $18 million purchase of Graduate Hospital - located on 18th and Lombard streets - in a meeting yesterday morning.

The University will use the building to create an in-patient rehabilitation facility in addition to the existing acute-care center, which serves as a step-down unit for recovering patients who may still require one-on-one attention from nurses and doctors.

The project, to be completed by July 2008, will be run in conjunction with Good Shepherd Rehabilitation Network, Ralph Muller, CEO of the University of Pennsylvania Health System, said at the meeting.

Ownership of the Graduate Hospital, currently in the possession of Tenet Healthcare Corporation, will be formally transferred to UPHS on March 30, at about the time renovations - which will likely last for 15 months - are slated to begin.

The added rehabilitation center will have 58 beds, and the number of beds offered at the acute center will expand to 38.

The money for the Graduate Hospital project will come from the health system's capital budget, the University's executive vice president, Craig Carnaroli, said.

And University officials are confident that the money will be put to good use.

"We thought we would take those services out of both hospitals and combine them into one setting," Muller said. "Graduate Hospital is a convenient place to do that."

Muller added that opening the new hospital will relieve the current pressures on the Hospital of University of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania Hospital, two hospitals under UPHS that provide rehabilitation services to patients.

"HUP is very full every day - our cancer and heart disease [areas] are bursting at the seams," he said. "We turn away patients every day because we're so full. . This will enable us to expand."

UPHS employees will comprise the new hospital's staff - which is expected to be about 410 people - while Good Shepherd Rehabilitation will focus on the hospital's management.

Good Shepherd has "been in the rehabilitation-medicine business for over 100 years. They have an excellent reputation," Susan Phillips, chief of staff at the School of Medicine, said.

"We think they have the same mission that we have in terms of providing the best care for our patients."

University President Amy Gutmann agreed, saying the new hospital will help "create good continuity in our patient support."

And those sentiments are mutual.

"The fusion of the two organizations' intellectual and clinical strengths will allow Good Shepherd Penn Partners to offer excellent comprehensive rehabilitation and long-term care," Sally Gammon, president and CEO of Good Shepherd Rehabilitation Network, said in a press release.

Comments powered by Disqus

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.