Fort Worth, Texas-based Cook Children's Health Care System has unveiled plans for a 10-year expansion project at its flagship campus.
Six notes:
1. The expansion includes a 700,000-square-foot medical tower to Cook Children's Medical Center, according to a Nov. 13 news release from the health system.
2. The new West Tower will connect to the existing medical center both above and below ground and will expand the NICU by 37 beds.
3. The tower will increase capacity for hematology/oncology services and research, operating rooms and imaging services, as well as allow for an expanded and redesigned pediatric intensive care unit.
4. The current PICU separates patient beds by curtains; the redesigned unit will feature 56 private rooms.
5. Because of its current capacity issues, the hospital sometimes has to divert patients to facilities as far as Oklahoma and Louisiana, hospital President Stan Davis said in the release.
6. Cook Children's campus currently spans 2.5 million square feet, and the expansion plan will add 1 million square feet over a decade.
"While this tower is over 700,000 square feet, we have about 160,000 square feet of shell space," Spencer Seals, Cook Children's vice president of construction and real estate, said in the release. "What that means is, as we're going through the programming of everything that has to go in this tower for this campus, we want to make sure that we have the ability to continue to expand services and continue to serve that growing population in Fort Worth.”