UH announces major $200M expansion of Ahuja Medical Center in Beachwood

CLEVELAND, OH (WOIO) -The Ahuja Medical Center in Beachwood opened in 2011, and today University Hospitals (UH) announced the second phase of the project will be a $200 million dollar expansion of the hospital.

The project will break ground in the fall of 2019 and will add a second, five-floor hospital tower and a two-floor sports medicine complex.

The second phase will increase capacity in some areas and add new ones for the Ahuja Medical Center and they include:

• New labor and delivery and other mother and baby services.
• New neonatal intensive care unit (NICU Level 2), increasing capacity to provide UH Rainbow NICU care and extending services to the east side.
• New, expanded emergency room growing from 22 beds to 30 beds.
• Women’s health and comprehensive breast health center, adding to services currently at the nearby UH Minoff Health Center at Chagrin Highlands.
• Expanded radiology to meet demands of emergency room, Harrington Heart and Vascular Institute and sports medicine.
• The largest sports medicine complex in Northeast Ohio, with a performance center, outpatient rehabilitation space, 18 exam rooms and two diagnostic radiology units, with convenient access to MRI capabilities and adjacent to operating rooms.
• New ambulatory surgical center with eight new operating rooms and 32 universal pre- and post-op beds.
• Expanded ambulatory services. UH Harrington Heart & Vascular Institute will add 10 new exam rooms. Currently Harrington clinic rooms are running near capacity.
• Expanded observation unit (all private beds), serving a growing number of patients who can be treated and released the same day.
• New short stay unit (less than 24 hours) dedicated to patients who need less than 24 hours of care in the ambulatory surgical center.

Adding a NICU unit will great increase the ability for UH to help treat new born babies according to Daniel I. Simon, MD, President, University Hospitals Medical Centers.

“Based on the patients we are seeing across the system, there is an incredible need for expanded NICU services, which the Ahuja Phase II project will address. Our 87-bed UH Rainbow NICU on UH’s main campus is often filled near to capacity,” Simon said in a news release.

The project will be paid for through bond financing and donations.

When completed, it’s expected the hospital will add 1,000 news jobs.

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