Emory University on Wednesday announced plans to upgrade and expand its medical facilities at the school's main campus in Druid Hills and the Crawford Long Hospital complex in Midtown.

Plans include a new 250-bed hospital and 395,000-square-foot outpatient clinic on Clifton Road in Druid Hills. In Midtown, Emory plans to build a midrise medical tower on West Peachtree Street that will house about 125 hospital beds, 137,000 square feet of outpatient clinic space and 75,000 square feet of new research space.

Emory's aging hospitals in Druid Hills and Midtown will remain open, though the new construction would enable some older rooms to be closed.

The cost of the project is still being determined but it's expected to be in the ballpark of $1.5 billion, said Mike Mandl, Emory's executive vice president for finance and administration.

The construction, to be completed in five years, will boost the capacity of Emory's two hospitals by a total of 300 beds, or 25 percent, and add at least 1,800 new jobs, officials said.

For the past two years, Emory has been studying ways to modernize its medical facilities, make them more accessible to patients and better integrate the school's medical and research departments. Emory even considered building a new medical campus at the school's Clairmont Road facility before discarding that idea as unworkable.

Emory medical officials say rising demand is straining resources —- a trend sure to continue as baby boomers age.

"We are seriously capacity constrained, especially at Emory Hospital now," said John T. Fox, CEO of Emory Healthcare. "We desperately need hospital beds."

But Emory is planning to do more than just expand. Officials intend to revolutionize the patient experience, from the parking deck to the operating room.

Each patient in the intensive care unit will be housed in a "family suite" that will include a hospital room and an adjacent, private waiting room. Operating rooms will be reconfigured to have imaging equipment in close proximity, enabling, say, cardiologists and surgeons to work more closely together.

The new buildings will be set up to make it much easier for patients to get from the parking deck to their appointments. For instance, the hospital and clinic at the Druid Hills campus will each have its own deck. And facilities will be designed in a way that most patients can receive all their care in one spot without having to move between buildings.

The facilities will be "organized around patient and clinical needs rather than [medical] specialty," said Fox.

The university's Board of Trustees has granted approval to spend $73 million to design the new facilities and prepare the Clifton Road site for construction of a new outpatient clinic.

The project will be funded in part through a $240 million donation from the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation, given in 2006 to build a new Emory Clinic.

Emory Hospital and Emory Crawford Long Hospital are two of the largest hospitals in metro Atlanta. Taken together, the two facilities have nearly 1,100 beds, more than Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta.

 DALE E. DODSON / Staff
PRESCRIPTION FOR GROWTH 
Emory is planning a more than $1 billion expansion of its facilities at its medical campuses in Druid Hills and Midtown. The plan includes new hospital beds, outpatient clinic space and research facilities. The construction is expected to be complete by 2013.

Three illustrations show the following:
MAP 1: (left)
1: Emory Crawford Long Hospital
2: New tower with 125 to 200 hospital beds, outpatient clinic space and research facilities.
3: New parking deck

MAP 2: (right)
1: Emory University Hospital
2: Children's Hospital
3: New research facility
4: New outpatient clinic
5: New 250-bed hospital
6: Existing outpatient clinic
7: New outpatient clinic

Map 3: (middle)
Street map of the Midtown Atlanta area to parts of Druid Hills. Location of both Emory Hospitals