BOSTON–Massachusetts General Hospital, which is consistently ranked as one of the top hospitals in the country, will build a new 12-story building to accommodate more patients, and give healthcare providers access to additional medical technology, according to news reports and the Massachussetts General Hospital, known as MGH.
The new 1 million square-foot building will add about 450 private patient rooms, as well as operating rooms, exam rooms, a procedural suite, imaging facilities, and infusion centers, according to a memo sent to MGH staff last Tuesday. Construction will start in 2020.
MGH President Peter L. Slavin told the Harvard Crimson that hospital leadership decided to construct a new building because the current MGH facility is overcrowded and does not have enough private rooms to accommodate patients admitted to the hospital.
The emergency department of the hospital faces the same issues, Harvard Crimson quoted Sally Mason Boemer, the hospital’s senior vice president for administration and finance, who is overseeing the project, as saying.
“I think there will also be space to help some of our workers, in their down time, relax and focus on the quality of their life,” Slavin told Harvard Crimson. “There’s a big problem with burnout among healthcare workers, and we need to figure out ways, in the space that we design for healthcare in the future, how we can counteract that to some degree.”
Hospital leaders anticipate MGH staff will have to care for increasingly large numbers of patients in coming years, according to Harvard Crimson.
“Right now in the United States there are about 40 million Medicare beneficiaries, people over the age of 65,” Slavin said. “In 20 years, that number will be 80 million, so there’s going to be a lot more heart disease and cancer and other problems associated with aging that people typically turn to hospitals for help with.”
