Having a baby is cause for celebration, and a new addition to Mercy Medical Center’s main campus in Des Moines will enable the whole family to visit to welcome the newest member of the family.   

In July, Mercy will break ground on a new five-floor surgical and obstetrics wing for the main hospital on Sixth Avenue north of downtown. The project, scheduled for completion in the spring of 2006, is the centerpiece of Mercy Momentum, a comprehensive plan for modernizing Mercy’s facilities throughout Greater Des Moines.   

At its April 5 meeting, the Des Moines City Council gave final approval to rezoning requests necessary for the project.   

“Overall, Mercy Momentum is a plan for how we retool for the future,” said Joe LeValley, the hospital’s senior vice president for planning and system development. The Mercy Momentum project also calls for two new ambulatory clinics to replace and expand existing clinics in Pleasant Hill and Ankeny, a new private physician office development in West Des Moines, a new medical office building on the main downtown campus and an expansion to the Mercy College of Health Sciences.   

Mercy is investing $100 million in its main campus, with an estimated $92 million going toward the hospital expansion and renovation and $7 million for the medical school expansion. Mercy will not have capital expenditures for the other parts of the Momentum project, as private physician groups and developers are investing in the buildings, which the developers will lease to Mercy.   

A $400-million-a-year operation, Mercy depreciates more than $20 million a year in capital items off its balance sheet. Experts say hospitals need to invest at least as much as they depreciate annually, LeValley said.

At the same time, Mercy’s chief competitor, Iowa Health-Des Moines, is moving forward with renovations to Iowa Lutheran Hospital and Iowa Methodist Medical Center. Iowa Health also has a new clinic under construction in Johnston and another clinic planned near downtown off Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway, with long-term expansion plans for Ankeny.

Officials say the renovations and expansions are a natural response to modern health-care trends and the needs of a growing, increasingly older population.

“What’s going on in Des Moines (with health-care construction) is not unusual compared to the region and the rest of the country,” said Sid Ramsey, vice president for strategic business development and marketing for Iowa Health.   

“Hospitals back in the heyday of managed care in the 1990s fully expected that they were going to see a ratcheting back of inpatient care, and more to outpatient services,” he said. “To a certain extent, that didn’t happen.”

AN ONGOING PROCESS

Last year, Iowa Health opened the Taylor House Hospice on the East Side, and in 2002 built a new emergency room at Iowa Lutheran Hospital. Iowa Health also completely renovated Blank Children’s Hospital in 2001, and in that same year, opened Lakeview Ambulatory Center in West Des Moines in a joint venture with the Iowa Clinic.

The health-care provider is also in the process of remodeling patient rooms, primarily at Iowa Methodist, to create private rooms with handicapped-accessible bathrooms. It’s also planning to renovate Iowa Methodist to create a separate pediatric surgery area, as well as altering the pre-operative and post-operative areas to increase patient privacy.

At Iowa Lutheran, cardiac rehabilitation services are being consolidated into one location at that hospital, and space is being remodeled for a new patient chemical dependency program.

Looking ahead, Iowa Health is building a new 7,700 square-foot clinic in Johnston that will be completed by August. Additionally, there are plans to relocate the Ingersoll primary care clinic to the intersection of Ingersoll Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway. Construction on that facility is expected to begin next month.

Also, Iowa Health has purchased 30 acres of land in northern Ankeny for future expansion, though it does not have specific plans for that property, Ramsey said.

Mercy, which was ahead of the trend when it upgraded to all private rooms 30 years ago, is now feeling the pinch created in part by high-technology equipment, which takes up more space in the patient rooms.

Additionally, rooms need to be larger to accommodate family members, who are now allowed greater access to patients than in the past. To that end, the new perinatal center will include a “celebration floor” where extended family members can visit a new baby in a less clinical environment.

The new wing will also include two new critical-care areas, a conference center and neurosciences center. Immediately following construction of Mercy’s new wing, renovation work will begin to expand operating rooms and the surgery department in the existing adjoining building.

Iowa Health made a “significant investment” in expanding its obstetrics wing in the 1990s, Ramsey said, yet it’s not uncommon for the wing to be completely filled with new mothers and their babies.

“That was one reason for wanting to expand that with the Myers hospital,” he said, referring to a proposed West Des Moines hospital that state regulators rejected earlier this year.

ATTRACTING HEALTH-CARE PROFESSIONALS

Keeping their hospitals updated is an important competitive edge for health-care providers, LeValley said.

“With the shortage of nurses and other health professionals, it’s really important that you provide a work environment that people find attractive and that helps you to recruit and keep good people,” he said. “When we’re recruiting physicians to Des Moines, they’re very interested in the facilities today, and they’re very interested in the plans we have for the future as we improve and modernize our facilities.”  

Mercy Momentum’s other projects include 330 Laurel St., a new 50,000-square-foot medical office building just south of the hospital that houses four physician practices. The first physician group moved in at the end of December.

Mercy also plans to move its North Clinic in Ankeny into a new 100,000-square-foot ambulatory care center that’s now under construction. When it’s completed, it will replace an existing 17,000-square-foot clinic. That project also includes ambulatory surgery, an imaging center, a pharmacy and a rehabilitation facility.

A smaller ambulatory care center will be built in Pleasant Hill. Construction of the 16,000-square-foot Mercy East facility, which will consolidate the existing Pleasant Hill and Hilltop clinics into one building, is expected to begin this spring.

Additionally, two physician groups plan to lease space in two medical office buildings that will be part of Mercy West Lakes, to be built on a 40-acre tract at 59th Street and University Avenue in West Des Moines.

Groundbreaking is also scheduled this spring for a 35,000-square-foot addition to the Mercy College of Health Sciences.

The planning for Mercy Momentum took more than three years, with input from a committee made up of physicians, staff and members of the public. A facility study conducted for the hospital about two years ago indicated that Mercy needed approximately 200,000 additional square feet.

The new addition was designed for greater efficiency, LeValley said.

“In terms of our central campus, facilities are just getting dated. The facility we’re in here is 30 years old; we have a real need to retool our facilities and make them more modern and efficient. This existing hospital tower we’re in has long corridors and isn’t a real efficient way to use nursing staff. This new building will be more circular in design, so nursing stations can be more centralized with less distances that nurses will have to travel.

“And certainly it will be more comfortable and family-friendly for patients and families,” LeValley said. “We’ll have more waiting rooms, better privacy, more space for family members to be comfortable as they’re supporting their loved ones in the hospital.”