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Metro Health Near Grand Rapids Shows What is Ahead in Earth-friendly Design, Patient Pampering
Detroit Free Press, Patricia Anstett, September 30, 2007 - Can a hospital win customers
with
environmentally friendly practices, newly released movies and a full menu of
meals patients can order whenever they want?
The 208-bed, $170-million hospital that Metro Health is opening today in the southwest
Grand Rapids suburbs is positioned to be so ecological and patient-pleasing that it will
capture market share from the area's other health care providers.
With only 12% of the Grand Rapids market currently, Metro Health is going after some
of the turf dominated by Spectrum Health and St. Mary's Health Care, part of Novi-
based Trinity Health, the two giants of health care in western Michigan. It is a hospital
"designed for a new era of medicine, not the last one," said Mike Faas, president and
chief executive officer.
Including private rooms, free surface parking, an extensive order-when-you-want menu
and a 48,500-square-foot roof that absorbs rainwater and helps to cool and heat the
building, the hospital offers a glimpse of what's coming in medical care. It is proof, too,
that even though Michigan's hospital regulators say the state needs no more new hospitals,
some have been successful in getting exceptions to those rules. That's a reality that gives
hope to several health systems that want to build hospitals in metro Detroit.
In the same way that a Macy's or Nordstrom anchor store attracts smaller retailers to a
mall, Metro Health is the centerpiece of a 170-acre village that will be home to a soon-
to-be-announced national hotel company; a top restaurant chain; a YMCA; two banks,
dental, medical device and hearing aid services; food store; doctors' offices; and
manyother businesses, all where there was a cornfield a decade ago.
"It is the biggest story Wyoming has seen so far," said Gary Granger, Metro Health's
partner in the village and president and chief executive officer of the Granger Group.
The village will generate $400 million in new development, as much as $10 million a
year in taxes to the City of Wyoming and more than 3,500 jobs, Granger said. The
hospital employs 2,000 full-time staffers and another 1,500 people will work in the
village. "We'll see more of this," Granger said, referring to medical villages that offer
retail and health services. Already, hospital executives are calling to find out more
about Metro Health's pioneering practices, he said.
Not welcome everywhere
There are tradeoffs not all communities are willing to make, Granger said. A big medical
development brings traffic, ambulance sirens and sewer and water runoff issues.
Earlier this year, Canton said no, for all those reasons, to a development Oakwood
Healthcare of Dearborn had spent several years, and several million dollars, planning
and designing.
Clarkston will be home to McLaren Health Care of Flint's $600-million medical village,
to be built in phases over the next few years. It will house cancer and heart centers,
physician offices and an emergency department. The parcel also has room for a 200-bed
hospital, but the state's Certificate of Need Commission, as well as the state's two
influential business and labor coalitions, stand in the way.
Health care staff from General Motors and Chrysler, along with the United Auto
Workers and the AFL-CIO weighed in against any new hospital construction in
Michigan at the Sept. 18 commission meeting. Though the issue wasn't on the
commission's agenda, the automakers and unions said they felt compelled to make
their views public because changing state regulations remains a priority for several
health systems, including McLaren.
Michigan has too many hospitals and needs no more, the commission and the coalitions
say. Hospital construction fuels rising health costs because each facility has to purchase
its own expensive equipment, as well as drain staff from existing hospitals, for nursing
and other job specialties in scarce supply.
Gov. Engler's support
Metro Health, at the Byron Center Avenue exit off the new M-6 Paul Henry
Expressway
in Grand Rapids, was the first hospital in Michigan to get an exception
to state
regulations prohibiting hospitals from transferring beds to new sites more
than
two miles away in urban areas.
"There were many hospitals in metro Detroit who would have given their eye teeth for
what we got in 2001," Granger said. "But it was not a slam dunk."
The key was former Michigan Gov. John Engler, who arranged for Carol Isaacs, then legislative liaison for the Michigan Department of Community Health and now deputy
chief to Attorney General Mike Cox, to see the deal through, Granger said. It paved the
way for Henry Ford Hospital and the St. John Health System to push through their own
legislative deals to build new facilities in West Bloomfield and Novi in the next two years.
More standoffs and legislative fights are likely in the years ahead, as hospitals push to
build in outer suburbs and close hospitals in cities where more patients are uninsured
or depend on Medicaid insurance that doesn't cover the full cost of care.
Greener practices
For Metro Health, the focus has been on how a hospital can take on environmental
leadership and court patients by eliminating hassle factors that make patients, and
their visitors, dread hospital stays.
Each room is private, with windows, and offers a foldout couch for overnight guests,
individual temperature and lighting adjustments and a 37-inch TV screen that can
show any of 30 recently released movies. The video component also provides Internet
access and a portal to view a person's electronically stored medical records, even results
from tests taken just the day before.
Metro Health offers one of the state's largest programs for ventilator-dependent patients.
The new hospital designed a rooftop lounge where patients can hook up ventilators and
enjoy the outdoors, an accommodation not offered in most facilities and one that could
be a magnet for people who face years, even decades, in hospital settings.
The new eight-story hospital also will be the biggest eco-friendly health system in the
Midwest, said John Ebers, sustainable business officer for Metro Health. No one knows
how many new patients that will attract nor how much money it will save, but both
those issues will be tracked by the hospital, said Ebers, who went to work for the health
system three years ago after graduating with a degree in sustainable business management
from Aquinas College.
"One of the operating principles of health care is first do no harm," Ebers said. "Isn't it
one of our obligations to echo those sentiments that physicians have through the health
care environment?"
Health care consumes 10%-20% of all the energy used in the United States, Ebers said.
"We know the very energy we use impacts the health of our communities," he said.
Hospitals haven't been in the forefront of the recycling movement so far, said Ebers,
one
of the few people for a health system working full-time on environment issues. "Awareness is getting to the point where health care administrators and health systems
are beginning to pay attention."
Each of the 40 buildings in the Metro Health Village, like the hospital, must meet strict
green environmental standards. Leadership and Energy in Environmental Design
certification requires adherence to five areas, beginning with how a site is cleared for
construction to a building's use of recycled materials in carpets, paints, solvents and
furnishings.
Green materials added 1% to 2% to costs though the hospital will save money on utilities
over the long haul, Ebers said. Granger anticipates no problems filling the village, even
though space rents "in the low $20s per square foot, versus $15 a square foot" nearby, he
said. In the end, the quality of care at the hospital, not its amenities and environmental
practices, are what will attract and keep patients, said Daniel Witt, director of
cardiovascular services for Metro Health.
The winners in Michigan health care will be those that "earn the right to stay," he said.
