The Medical University of South Carolina has opened Ashley River Tower, a $275 million hospital in Charleston built to treat patients with cardiovascular and digestive diseases.
The 641,000-square-foot building is the first step in a multiphase expansion plan that will eventually replace the facility that has served as MUSC’s teaching hospital for 50 years, according to an MUSC announcement published by the trade magazine Diagnostic and Interventional Cardiology.
“MUSC Ashley River Tower was developed for several reasons, first and foremost to accommodate the needs of an aging and growing population in South Carolina,” MUSC President Dr. Raymond Greenberg said, according to the design magazine Interiors+Sources. “This cutting-edge hospital represents the future of medical care and will lead the way in providing the latest technology in a healing environment.”
Capacity has been a problem for the past decade, and the hospital has often been unable to take all the patients referred by hospitals and physicians around the state and region, according to Interiors+Sources.
What is inside
The tower has 156 beds, including 32 intensive care beds, along with nine operating rooms, catheterization and interventional radiology laboratories, endoscopy and imaging suites, outpatient clinic space and a chest pain center open around the clock, MUSC said. Specially sized equipment, treatment space and ICU beds are designed for bariatric surgery patients. A division specializes in surgery for gastrointestinal cancers, according to Interiors+Sources.
The complex combines a four-story diagnostic and treatment building with a seven-story patient tower, connected by a garden atrium. Patients get private rooms with space for family, wireless internet access, family lounges on each floor and valet and concierge services, according to Interiors+Sources.
The exterior is mostly glass to give patients natural light, and a large glass curtain wall is meant to reflect Charleston’s nautical history, the magazine reported.
Built for safety and storms
Ashley River Tower is the first health care facility in the United States built under new hurricane and seismic construction codes, according to Interiors+Sources. A mock-up of its exterior was tested under rigorous structural conditions to certify that the design could withstand a hurricane and a seismic event.
A new electronic medical records system collects patient information in one place, making records easier for referring physicians to reach and cutting the use of paper, MUSC said. A central sterile corridor lets doctors and nurses move quickly between operating rooms in an emergency. Recyclable and paper-free materials are used throughout the building, according to Interiors+Sources.
Each operating suite has several flat-screen monitors. Anything in a patient’s electronic record, from a catheterization image to lab results, can be pulled up in the operating room at the touch of a button, and MUSC said the hospital is one of the first in the nation with that capability.
Most operating room equipment hangs from ceiling booms rather than sitting on the floor, which makes it easier to replace, and every patient room can be converted to an ICU bed if needed, according to Interiors+Sources.
“Patient safety and quality of care were at the center of every conversation,” Dr. Patrick Cawley, MUSC’s executive medical director, said, according to Interiors+Sources.
How it was financed
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development insured $401 million in bonds to finance the project, MUSC said. That figure covers both bonds for the new construction and the refinancing of existing debt, which was a requirement for the new funding, according to Interiors+Sources.
Cawley said the building’s design reflects the work of hundreds of physicians, nurses, caregivers, hospital leaders and patients. He said that “together, we’ve created an environment which applies a new understanding of what constitutes superior health care,” the magazine reported.
