New Medical Tower to Expand Care for Arizona Women and Children, Combine Dignity Health and Phoenix Children's Expertise in One East Valley Location

PHOENIX, Aug. 16, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Dignity Health, one of the nation's largest health systems, and Phoenix Children's, Arizona's only nationally recognized pediatric hospital, are jointly developing a new facility aimed at helping meet the growing medical needs of women and their children.

The facility will be located on the Dignity Health Mercy Gilbert Medical Center campus in Gilbert. Planning and design is currently underway with construction expected to begin in the fall of 2018 and be completed in 2020.  

The five-story medical tower will include 24 labor and delivery rooms, including six dedicated to high-risk patients and 48 post-partum beds, operated by Mercy Gilbert Medical Center, along with an emergency department dedicated to obstetrics. Phoenix Children's will operate 50 pediatric beds, a 12-bed pediatric emergency department, pediatric operating rooms and a new 60-bed Level 3 neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).

The new facility is a strategic expansion of the partnership between Phoenix Children's and Dignity Health to bring together the state's experts for both mothers and babies. The two systems have worked together to improve access to high quality care since 2011.

Both systems participate in the Arizona Care Network, an affordable care organization with more than 5,000 clinicians, and most recently, Arizona Mother-Baby Care. Arizona Mother-Baby Care provides personalized care coordination from preconception through pregnancy, birth, and early childhood by connecting patients to the best specialists and caregivers. Many of these specialists within the Arizona Mother-Baby Care network will soon be located together in the new East Valley facility.

In coordination with the Arizona Care Network, Phoenix Children's Care Network (PCCN), the state's only clinically integrated pediatric network, includes over 1,000 pediatric clinicians. The new facility will support the PCCN members in the East Valley.

"In the years since we first partnered with Phoenix Children's, we have established a wonderful relationship that has benefited families around the state and helped our organizations stay strong," said Linda Hunt, president and CEO of Dignity Health in Arizona. "By joining forces again on this East Valley project we will be increasing needed services provided to families."

Phoenix Children's president and CEO, Bob Meyer, said the new East Valley facility will mean the top pediatric services in the state will now be closer to home for thousands of families. "We are pleased to be teaming up with Dignity Health again," said Meyer. "By partnering, we can meet the needs of the community by more deeply serving the women and children of the East Valley."

SOURCE Dignity Health; Phoenix Children's