Mather Hospital Breaks Ground on $20M Patient Care Pavilion

John T. Mather Hospital broke ground on a new $ 20 million, 35-single-bedded patient care unit on Thursday, the first at Mather in more than a decade.

The 35-single bedded patient care unit will be known as the Arthur & Linda Calace Family Pavilion and will add more than 28,400 square feet of space to the existing hospital.

The pavilion will also house office and teaching facilities for a Graduate Medical Education Program.

“This is not merely a building, but a building for the future of healthcare for our community,” said Kenneth Jacoppi, Chairman of the Board of Directors at Mather Hospital.

The project will create 70 single-bedded rooms by converting 35 semi-private rooms to private rooms and building 35 new rooms in a new patient care unit to be located on the third level of the new Pavilion.

According to Kenneth Roberts, hospital president, single-bedded rooms have become the standard in healthcare today, but private rooms currently make up only 13 percent of Mather’s medical-surgical patient rooms.

“At the completion of this project, the majority of the medical/surgical patient care rooms will be single bedded,” said Roberts.

The second floor of the Pavilion will house offices and conference rooms for a new graduate medical education program. Mather plans to welcome its first class of residents in Internal Medicine in July 2014.

The first floor of the Pavilion will be a new state-of-the-art conference center that will facilitate high quality educational opportunities for future doctors through technology that supports distance learning. The center of learning will also be available to other staff as well as the community at large for health symposiums and support group meetings.

“We started our capital campaign in March of this year and to date we’ve raised approximately $3.3 million primarily due to the generosity of local philanthropists Arthur and Linda Calace, Robert and Kathy Frey, and our outstanding Auxiliary Volunteers,” said James Danowski, Chairman of the JTM Foundation, which seeks charitable support for Mather Hospital.

According to a hospital spokesman, the building is anticipated to cost $20 million to construct. The hospital is seeking to raise $5 million in philanthropic support.