Akron Children’s Hospital plans to relocate all outpatient services to one place with an expansion that will double the size of one of the hospital’s buildings.
The expansion to the seven-story Considine Professional Building on the main downtown campus will cost $84 million and is expected to be completed in April 2018.
The space, at West Bowery and Exchange streets across from the hospital’s main facility, will grow from 250,000 square feet to about 480,000.
Grace Wakulchik, the hospital’s chief operating officer, described the addition at Children’s as a convenience for patients.
“We know many of our patients have multiple appointments and see several different providers,” Wakulchik said in a statement. “They come with siblings, wheelchairs, strollers, infant carriers — and perhaps a lot on their minds — and we want to make their appointments as easy and convenient as possible.”
The addition will also change the way check-in and registration works in the building. All check-ins will happen at two central locations, rather than in each individual department. Patients will then be directed to the correct floor.
“We want to centralize check-in,” said Linda Gentile, the hospital’s vice president of construction and support services. “It should make it a lot more intuitive, I think.”
Wakulchik compared the check-in change to the way airlines check in riders.
“The new check-in process is more patient-friendly and future-focused,” she said. “For example, consider how airline check-in has changed over the years — where counter spaces were once needed, passengers can now check in from kiosks or even on their smartphones.”
Gentile said the expansion will help streamline outpatient services, which have seen a spike in demand recently.
“We’ve seen continued growth of new patients and new outpatient providers to accommodate them and get them help quickly,” she said. “There’s been a sort of flip over recent years.”
When construction is complete, 11 departments including psychiatry, general surgery and outpatient pharmacy will relocate there from other spaces, some from as far as blocks away. In addition, sports rehabilitation and the NeuroDevelopmental Science Center, which are already located there, will have room to expand.
Akron Children’s first confirmed plans to expand the building in July, but released no details. The hospital asked the city to vacate a portion of Spring Alley between West Bowery and Water streets to accommodate the addition.
The announcement is part of ongoing growth at the hospital. Last year, it added a new neurosurgery operating room, intraoperative MRI and a tower that houses a new emergency department, a neonatal intensive care unit, an outpatient surgery center and a special delivery unit for high-risk babies.
Nick Glunt can be reached at 330-996-3565 or nglunt@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @NickGluntABJ and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ngfalcon.