Mayo Clinic to Host Grand Opening Weekend for a New State-of-the-art Hospital on the Jacksonville Campus

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Mayo Clinic will celebrate the dedication of its new $254 million hospital at its Jacksonville campus with a series of private and public events planned for Saturday and Sunday, March 29-30. The new hospital and emergency department open at 7 a.m. on Saturday, April 12.

The new hospital will be dedicated at 11:30 am on Saturday, March 29. The ceremony will be held under the Mayo Building's arched canopy, which is the hospital's main entrance, on the clinic campus at 4500 San Pablo Road. Participants include Jacksonville Mayor John Peyton; Mayo Clinic CEO Dr. Denis Cortese; the Jacksonville clinic's CEO Dr. George Bartley and invited guests and benefactors. The keynote speaker is Hugh B. Price, former president and chief executive officer of the National Urban League, who is now a senior fellow of the Brookings Institute in Washington, D. C. and a member of Mayo Clinic's Board of Trustees. The public can preview the new hospital at a community open house from 1 p.m. - 5 p.m. on Sunday, March 30. Self-guided tours of the facility, food and entertainment will be available.

"The new hospital brings life to a conviction that the Doctors Mayo had more than 100 years ago – patients are best served by teams of specialists working together in one place to apply their collective expertise to patients' medical problems," said Dr. George Bartley, CEO of Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville. "We will achieve that vision when the new hospital opens on April 12 by uniting hospital services, specialty care and physician visits on one campus. Our patients will benefit from the integration, the convenience, and the close working relationships of all of the Mayo professionals involved in their care."

Robert Brigham, chair, department of administration at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, added, "The completion of Mayo Clinic hospital achieves our long-held goal of a fully integrated medical campus in Jacksonville offering inpatient, outpatient, research and educational facilities at the same location. We are extremely proud of this achievement and believe the new hospital will further distinguish Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville as one of the foremost healthcare facilities in the southeastern U.S."

About Mayo Clinic Hospital
Groundbreaking for the new Mayo Clinic hospital, which was funded from the proceeds from the sale of St. Luke's Hospital and more than $97 million in contributions from benefactors and staff, occurred in November 2005. The construction of the new hospital allows for the flexibility to support new technologies as well as evolving practice standards and methods. The six-story, 214-bed hospital has the built-in capacity and infrastructure to be expanded to 16 floors with 900 beds if future patient needs warrant it.

The hospital has been designed for the comfort, convenience and care of patients. Each spacious room has a large window to provide natural light and features residential décor and accommodations for a family member to stay overnight. Patient rooms are located on only one side of extra-wide halls to make for quieter surroundings. This layout is referred to as a "racetrack" configuration, with a center core comprised of support services, teaching and conferencing rooms and two team work areas per wing. This floor plan is intended to improve caregiver access and communications. Strategically placed workstations between every two patient rooms positions caregivers even closer to their patients.

The entire hospital is pre-wired so monitoring of vital signs can be done at the patient's bedside. This allows many patients to be cared for by nurses with expertise in their specific health condition, rather than being moved to a dedicated monitoring unit.

The hospital's operating facilities are equipped with state-of-the-art technology that enables surgeons to develop and perform innovative procedures that are less invasive, more economical and more effective. The surgical suite contains 14 oversized operating rooms for patient procedures, plus one cysto suite. The operating rooms are built around a sterile core, through which staff receives its instruments and supplies. The six existing operating rooms in the Mayo Building will continue to be used for a total of 21 operating rooms on the campus.

The new hospital features a helicopter landing pad and an emergency department. In addition, Mayo's transplant programs, which include blood and marrow, liver, pancreas, kidney, heart and lung, are located in specially designed areas within the hospital.

The hospital is equipped with computerized systems designed to speed the flow of decision-making information to medical professionals and improve the quality of care. Mayo Clinic's electronic medical records and computerized radiology systems will provide up-to-the-minute information and fully integrate with electronic information in the clinic buildings.

The new hospital and emergency department open at 7 a.m. on April 12. That day, Mayo Clinic patients will be transported from St. Luke's Hospital to the new hospital on the clinic campus, and Mayo will turn over operation of St. Luke's to St. Vincent's HealthCare. Preparations are being made to transport 75 to 100 Mayo patients via ambulance to the new hospital.

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