Administrators at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt recently announced expansion plans that will boost the pediatric facility to more than one million square feet and 300-plus patient beds.The four-floor tower will be built atop the hospital’s Southeast façade, located at the corner of Children’s Way and Medical Center Drive. Each floor will add approximately 40,000 square feet of patient care space. The hospital currently houses 271 patient beds. Caring for the Critically IllThe first floor of the new tower will house approximately 36 intensive care beds, according to John Howser, assistant vice chancellor of Medical Center News and Communications at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Plans for the three additional floors have yet to be determined, but construction will begin one floor at a time, he said. The project is slated to begin in 2015. The announcement reflects a citywide commitment to critically ill children in Middle Tennessee. In October 2012, TriStar Centennial Women's & Children's Hospital opened a 10-bed pediatric intensive care unit.Vanderbilt’s announcement comes on the heels of the completion of another major expansion to Monroe Carell. In May 2012 the hospital opened a $30 million, 30,000-square-foot, 33-bed expansion that created capacity for additional acute care, surgical and neonatal intensive care services. The expansion was a project of Nashville-based Earl Swensson Architects.Vanderbilt Expands SouthBig plans also are underway for the health system in Williamson County.“One of the things that remains high on our priority list is to build a freestanding outpatient facility in Williamson County,” Howser said. “We’re still in the pre-planning phase trying to get plans ready for that.” Located at the corner of McEwen Drive and Carothers Parkway in Franklin, the Cool Springs facility will consolidate outpatient adult primary and specialty services currently scattered throughout 15 offices countywide. Plans for the 22-acre campus were first announced in 2010, but no dates have been given for the project to beginBlocks away, VUMC affiliate Williamson Medical Center has broken ground on its latest expansion project, to include a children’s hospital that will bear the name Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital Vanderbilt at Williamson Medical Center. Funded by WMC, the proposed expansion includes a three-story pediatric tower, with two floors of space to include a pediatric emergency department, located in the tower’s first floor, a 12-bed pediatric inpatient unit and four pediatric observation beds, which are planned to be located in the tower’s third floor. That facility is expected to open early 2015.
