The Hennepin County Board of Commissioners approved a resolution Sept. 11 directing county staff to work with Hennepin Healthcare System, Inc. (HHS) – the governing body of Hennepin County Medical Center – to establish two new outpatient care centers – one in the western suburbs and one in downtown Minneapolis at sites to be determined.
Currently outpatient and inpatient services are mixed together throughout HCMC’s four-block campus. HHS will move most outpatient care out of the hospital and into the two stand-alone facilities.
The board is looking at identifying and acquiring a site in western Hennepin County for a 120,000-square-foot facility first, followed by a site in downtown Minneapolis for a 140,000-square-foot facility. The suburban facility is expected to open 18 months after selection of a site.
Total anticipated cost of the new clinics will be $108 million – $53 million for the suburban clinic and $55 million for the downtown clinic. Funding will come from the hospital’s cash reserves; county-issued bonds that would be serviced, in part, by the healthcare system; and capital funding approved as part of a master facility plan approved in 2007.
In recent years, HCMC has more than doubled the number of neighborhood clinics it operates in Minneapolis and the suburbs. In addition to many clinics at the downtown campus, HCMC now has clinics in Brooklyn Park, Brooklyn Center, Richfield, St. Anthony Village, south and southeast Minneapolis, Bloomington, Eden Prairie and Chaska.
HCMC has also invested in improvements to the downtown campus, including renovating all of the intensive care units, opening a new Burn Center, and constructing a new Center for Hyperbaric Medicine, and opening a Center for Wound Healing.
Information provided by Hennepin County.
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