$98M Blodgett Hospital overhaul proceeding on schedule in East Grand Rapids

By: Deborah Johnson Wood

The $98 million overhaul and a 162,000-square-foot expansion of Blodgett Hospital at 1840 Wealthy Street SE is on schedule for a November 2010 opening.

When it's all done, 284 private patient rooms with family gathering space in each will bring a new dimension to patient care. The plan is to close existing patient beds in buildings built in 1916, the '50s and the '60s. To make up for that loss, the new five-story expansion includes 131 private patient rooms, as well as eight state-of-the-art operating rooms.

"The investment we're making here at Blodgett is a lot more than just the buildings and renovations," says Jim Wilson, president. "We are updating to state-of-the-art technologies all of the imaging modalities we have."

Those include two CT scanners installed last year, upgrades to nuclear medicine and fluoroscopy technologies, the addition of a second MRI machine, and an upgrade to digital mammography last year.

A renovation of the emergency room involves new patient care rooms, an already-reconstructed clinical core area, and renovation of the examination rooms.

All public spaces—lobbies, conference rooms, an auditorium, restrooms, kitchen/cafeteria—are also on the drawing board for upgrades.

Infrastructure revamps include ongoing improvements -- some began two years ago -- to the parking deck and replacement of all the elevators in the hospital's 11 elevator banks.

The Blodgett campus, part of the Spectrum Health system, provides 1,800 full-time-equivalent jobs just inside the East Grand Rapids city boundaries.

"We're excited to make this investment so Blodgett hospital continues to be a very viable part of the East Grand Rapids business community," Wilson says. "We take that commitment very seriously."

Source: Jim Wilson, Blodgett Hospital

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Deborah Johnson Wood is development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at [email protected].