Hospitals are built to attract and retain medical specialists or for strategic positioning in a specific market, but the driving factor behind the majority of capital construction projects is the simple need for more beds or suitable facilities to satisfy future population growth, or, in many cases, existing shortages based on current population and needs. Even with the substantial number of capital projects placed on hold or outright canceled, there are still others ongoing.

Responding to a Common Need


Like many medical facilities, Phoenix Children's Hospital in Phoenix, AZ is at a critical juncture. Phoenix is the nation's fifth largest city by population and one of its fastest growing. Nearly one million children live within the metro Phoenix area and that number is projected to increase by more than 50% over the next 20 years.




In 2008, Phoenix Children's began construction on a $588 million expansion project that it hopes will both meet the needs of an expanding population and continue its transformation into a world-class pediatric medical facility. Bob Meyer, President and CEO of Phoenix Children's Hospital, describes the project's beginnings, "Back in 2004-2005 we had entered into a strategic planning process. With all good planning processes, you have that big 'Aha' moment, and ours at the time was the tremendous growth in the population of children in the Valley [Phoenix metropolitan area.] Based on 2003 data, there were 900,000 children in Maricopa County. There are more than a million today, and that number was projected to be 1.5 to 1.7 million by 2025. You do any of the standard planning metrics or bed algorithms of beds per thousand population or physicians by specialty, etc. and pretty soon you run into a huge deficit, which we thought for Maricopa County was going to be 800 pediatric beds and 300 physicians by 2025."

Based on this assessment, PCH bought and then renovated an older adult hospital in Phoenix, which increased their capacity by roughly a third at the time. But the growth in the Valley rapidly caught up with them, as Meyer explains, "It was apparent within a year or year and a half after moving in that we had absorbed that capacity and were still turning away significant numbers of children. So we hired an architect and went through the facility planning process in 2005-2006."

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