On Sunday, Feb. 1, The University of California at San Francisco Medical Center officially opens an 878,000-sf, six-story complex at UCSF’s 60.2-acre Mission Bay research campus that includes three state-of-the-art hospitals with a total of 289 beds.
Ten years in the planning, the new medical center started construction in December 2010. It has approximately 300 employees and 500 physicians. About $600 million of the complex’s $1.5 billion cost was raised from private donors, including venture capitalist Ron Conway, who contributed $40 million to the complex’s 207,500-sf outpatient medical building with 180 exam rooms, which is expected to serve 1,500 outpatient visitors daily.
All told, the new medical complex anticipates 122,000 outpatient visits in its first year, 5,380 outpatient surgeries, 4,272 inpatient surgeries, and between 2,600 and 2,700 births.
The new medical center focuses on caring for children, women, and cancer patients. The UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital San Francisco, with 183 beds that include a 50-bed neonatal nursery, handles all pediatric inpatient visits. (Benioff’s chlidren’s hospital on UCSF’s Parnassus campus is moving its inpatient services to Mission Bay, but will continue to handle child outpatient care.) The new facility includes a fully accredited K-12 school, and media platforms for room service, Skype, and social media.
The 36-bed UCSF Betty Irene Moore Women’s Hospital is the region’s first dedicated women’s hospital. And the 70-bed UCSF Bakar Cancer Hospital serves adult patients with orthopedic, urologic, gynecologic, head and neck, gastrointestinal, and colorectal cancers.
Among the technologies available at this medical center are telemedicine, robotics, and intra-operative imaging.
The complex includes 4.3 acres of green space, 60,000 sf of rooftop gardens on the third, fourth, and fifth floors; a 99,000-sf public plaza on Fourth Street; and 1,049 available parking spaces.
(Take a virtual “fly through” of the medical center.)
The location of the medical center on UCSF’s Mission Bay campus puts its physicians in close proximity to researchers and new biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies in the area. The new cancer hospital, for example, sits near the UCSF Helen Diller Family Cancer Research Building, where leading scientists are seeking causes and cures for cancer.
“The location was key to bringing the three hospitals together,” says Herb Moussa, AIA, LEED AP, Principal at Stantec Architecture, the project’s lead architect. (The Building Team included Cmbridge CM as project and construction management consultant; William McDonough+Partners as Associate Architect; DRP Construction as general contractor; Rutherford & Chekene as the hospitals’ structural engineer; ARUP as structural and MEP engineer; CSWStuber-Stroeh Engineering as civil engineer; EDAW AECOM as landscape engineer; and Teecom Design Group for communications.)
All told, there were more than 200 architects, engineers, and contractors on this project. Moussa says they all worked at the nearby Integrated Center for Design and Construction. “Being able to work collaboratively made things go so much easier,” he tells BD+C, in terms of addressing problems and issues. For example, the client decided that the interiors for the hospitals were too disparate, and wanted their look and color palette to be more uniform. That required “quite extensive” changes, says Moussa, which would have been even more complicated had the Building Team not been working closely.
This project’s challenge, he says, was to give each hospital its own identity without undermining the complex’s conceptual design and functionality. So there are separate entrances for adults. The children’s hospital is turned 10 degrees from the rest of the complex and has its own entrance, canopy, and drop-off area.
Moussa has spent most of his career designing hospitals, but this is his first with a pediatric building. He has a special affinity for Benioff Children’s Hospital, which in April 2010 treated his then nine-year-old daughter Sarah for swelling of the brain and seizures brought on by a sinus infection that spread to her eye. Moussa kept a journal of his daughter’s treatment, which he says informed his design of the new medical center. “It gave me an appreciation of what this hospital wants to be.”
A few days before opening its Mission Bay complex, UCSF Medical Center signed a letter of intent with Fresno-based Community Medical Centers to expand women’s and children’s services to California’s Central Valley, which has an undersupply of specialists.
Related Stories
Healthcare Facilities | Dec 16, 2021
Leo A Daly designs mental health clinic for veterans in Tampa
The new facility will consolidate all mental health services the VA offers into one clinic.
Healthcare Facilities | Dec 15, 2021
COVID-19 has altered the speed and design of healthcare projects, perhaps irrevocably
Healthcare clients want their projects up and running quicker, a task made more complicated by the shortage of skilled labor in many markets.
Healthcare Facilities | Dec 15, 2021
MEP design considerations for rural hospitals
Rural hospitals present unique opportunities and challenges for healthcare facility operators. Oftentimes, the infrastructure and building systems have not been updated for years and require significant improvements in order to meet today’s modern medical demands. Additionally, as these smaller, more remote hospitals are acquired by larger regional and national healthcare systems, the first step by new ownership is often to update and rehabilitate the building. But how can this be done thoughtfully, economically, and efficiently in ways that allow the engineering and facility staff to adapt to the changes? And how can the updates accurately reflect the specific needs of rural communities and the afflictions with which these areas most commonly face?
Healthcare Facilities | Dec 7, 2021
Wheeler Kearns Architects completes Howard Brown Health’s Broadway Youth Center in Chicago
The new facility will provide medical and social service programs to LGBTQI+ youth.
Healthcare Facilities | Nov 23, 2021
Why vertical hospitals might be the next frontier in healthcare design
In this article, we’ll explore the opportunities and challenges of high-rise hospital design, as well as the main ideas and themes we considered when designing the new medical facility for the heart of London.
Healthcare Facilities | Nov 12, 2021
Centro Hospitalario Serena Del Mar is Safdie Architects’ first project in Latin America
The hospital project is characterized by its connectivity to nature.
Healthcare Facilities | Nov 2, 2021
Key design considerations for designing the smart patient room
The complete patient experience encompasses the journey to the hospital, the care experience, and the trip back home. All these touchpoints come with an expectation.
Cladding and Facade Systems | Oct 26, 2021
14 projects recognized by DOE for high-performance building envelope design
The inaugural class of DOE’s Better Buildings Building Envelope Campaign includes a medical office building that uses hybrid vacuum-insulated glass and a net-zero concrete-and-timber community center.
Healthcare Facilities | Oct 22, 2021
The VA is updating what once was the main hospital on a Florida medical campus
The renovated Building One will provide outpatient services.
Healthcare Facilities | Oct 21, 2021
UW Medical Center starts construction on Behavioral Health Teaching Facility
Will add much-needed patient bed capacity for Seattle.