UPHS Breaks Ground on Center for Advanced Medicine
Penn Medicine announces the largest
capital project undertaking in its history with
the new Center
for Advanced Medicine. This
state-of-the art facility will bring together
Penn's top medical minds to fight the nation's
top killers -- all under one roof. Our physicians,
surgeons, nurses and medical staff - who battle
cancer and cardiovascular disease on a daily
basis - will now be able to care for our patients
on an outpatient basis in one central, modern
and comfortable location.
 "This
will be a state-of-the-art facility that will
facilitate world-class and convenient care for
patients with cardiac and vascular diseases," said
Michael
Parmacek, MD, chief of cardiovascular
medicine at the Hospital of the University of
Pennsylvania. "Our services at the new Center
for Advanced Medicine will range from heart failure
and transplantation ambulatory care to cardiac
arrhythmia to adult congenital heart disease
to cardiac diagnostic imaging to interventional
cardiology services. Patients at risk for, or
suffering from life-threatening, heart disease
will be in the most capable and caring hands
at the new facility."
The new $232 million dollar Center -- comprised
of 300,000-square-feet for clinical space --
will house Penn's Abramson
Cancer Center,
radiation oncology, cardiovascular medicine,
and an out-patient surgical pavilion. “This
important project will provide enormous benefits
to our patients, physicians, staff, and indeed,
to the entire Philadelphia region,” says
University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann,
PhD. “The Center's mission, to
offer more accessible, patient-friendly care
directly supports our long-range vision to share
the fruits of our integrated knowledge with our
communities.”
Nationally renowned architect Rafael Vinoly
of Rafael Vinoly Architects PC -- who is partnering
with Perkins Eastman on this project and is known
locally for creating the Kimmel Center -- was
chosen to design the new Center. Additionally,
physicians and nurses have participated every
step of the way in the planning to help design
a building conducive to the most effective delivery
of health care and to create the most ideal working
environment. One unique aspect to the facility
- a glass atrium will top off the building, bringing
sunlight into all corners and opening the formerly
blocked landscape from 34th Street to the Schuylkill
River.
Scheduled to open in 2008, the building will
be located on the corner of 34th Street and
Civic Center Boulevard. In addition to providing
more clinical care capacity, the new building
will provide the setting for a new paradigm of
patient care at Penn. “The Center for Advanced
Medicine will enable us to take patient care
to a new level of excellence, with every aspect
of the building designed with our patients' comfort,
convenience, and quality of care in mind,” says
Arthur H. Rubenstein, MBBCh, Executive Vice President
of the University of Pennsylvania for the Health
System and Dean of the School of Medicine.
In addition to improving access to world-class
medical care for Philadelphia's citizens,
the new Center will also help improve the economic
health of the city by creating new jobs on a
permanent basis. Recognizing this positive impact,
federal, state, and local governments are providing
more than $20 million in support of the project
and individual donors have already contributed
$27 million to support the project.
“The Center for Advanced Medicine will
be a spectacular statement of where Penn Medicine
is going in the 21st Century,” says Ralph
Muller, CEO of the University of Pennsylvania
Health System. “It will provide a place
where our excellent health care professionals
will be able to practice the most advanced medicine
available, treating patients in a setting that
is a patient-oriented as it can possibly be.”
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