Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital has plans to build a 115,000-square-foot addition connected to the west side of its existing hospital near the corner of Wealthy St. SE and Jefferson Avenue SE in Grand Rapids.
The four-story structure will rise above the property now used for
Saint Mary's Health Services parking along Jefferson Avenue, allowing for an enhanced parking area under the structure, says Mary Free Bed CEO Kent Riddle. Included in the $48 million construction cost is a complete revamp of the existing 80-bed hospital to all-private patient rooms.
The entire project will bring another 40 private beds to the hospital campus, larger therapy rooms with state-of-the-art equipment, and family-friendly gathering areas and overnight accommodations.
"Families are an integral part to the rehabilitation process, and currently, if parents are staying with children [who are patients], the parent has to sleep in the room on a cot," Riddle says. "Also, patients coming from outside Kent County have families that need to stay in the area, so we're looking at adding 10 rooms where families can stay overnight or just have a place to get away from it all."
Riddle stresses that everything is still in the early planning stages, and while there's a general vision guiding the process, details have yet to be hammered out.
The main thrust of the vision is to provide beds for patients who no longer need acute care, but who still need around-the-clock care and rehabilitative therapy.
"Patients already come to Mary Free Bed from around the country and Canada," Riddle says. "We're seeing an increase in patients from the east side of the state and other areas outside our typical regional area. The new facility will allow us to have even more sub-specialization in therapies for pediatrics, amputees, stroke rehabilitation, brain injury rehabilitation and oncology, pulmonary and cardiac rehabilitation."
Riddle expects the construction to be completed by late 2013.
Source: Kent Riddle, Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital; Mary Ann Sabo, Sabo Public Relations
Writer: Deborah Johnson Wood, Development News Editor
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