Building Questions

Amended Statement to the Citizen's Advisory Committee, Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center.
Prepared and Presented by a Concerned Neighbor, Published With Permission
September 26, 2007

At the August 23 scoping meeting, hospital administrators showed the projected need for more beds over the next 20 years. However, they failed to discuss the key question that should concern us most:

**WHERE should these beds be located TO BEST SERVE THE CHILDREN of the entire region?

There are compelling reasons why development of a second hospital campus outside of Seattle would better serve the region's children and their families:

1. The cost of constructing new buildings on the site of, in fact right on top of, existing buildings is substantially greater than the cost of building on an unoccupied site - the cost could be tripled. How many more needy patients could be served with better equipment and personnel by using the hundreds of millions of dollars thereby saved?

2. What is to happen to the existing hospital buildings during the 20-year construction? Will these be demolished, resulting in an actual loss of beds during the construction period? Or will the existing beds be relocated to another site? - if such a relocation is deemed satisfactory for the next 20 years, surely it should be satisfactory on a permanent basis. Or, if the existing buildings will remain open during construction, what will be the health impacts of the construction noise and dust on the young patients and their families?

3. Also, has anyone thought seriously about the tremendous stress that 20 years of almost continuous major construction will place on the hospital staff itself? Place yourself in the shoes of a doctor, nurse, or other hospital employee trying to deliver delicate health care on a major construction site - perhaps battle-hardened Army medics will be needed? In addition to the dust and noise, think of the already-long working hours made longer by a grid-locked commute to a major construction site - does the Hospital really want to create an overtired, overstressed medical staff that already does its best to care for the most critically ill young patients? Certainly recruitment and retention of first-rate medical personnel will be much more difficult under these circumstances, compounded by the demand-driven inflation of their housing costs in the tight Seattle housing market. Furthermore, patients' families will think twice before sending their needy young children to such an unfavorable construction environment, so from a purely business viewpoint, what will this do to the Hospital's crucial bottom line? Once again, logic dictates that construction of a second campus, which will leave the present campus untouched and tranquil, is in the best interests of both the patients and the medical staff.

4. It is well known that young patients do best when their families and friends can be constantly present at their bedside, so why site new beds in this overcrowded, often grid-locked corner of Seattle, seriously compromising the access of these families to their children? Put the new beds where the new patients will be, such as the East Side, Snohomish, Everett, Marysville. (Just today the University of Washington announced that it has narrowed consideration for the site of its new campus to Snohomish County, the area of greatest projected growth.) This will benefit those who matter most – the young patients their families, and the hospital medical personnel and staff.

(At the scoping meeting we heard that children's hospitals in other cities, faced with similar population growth, have chosen to decentralize and build second campuses in the areas of most rapid growth - so why should this region not do the same?)

Surely these and other critical questions should be discussed and evaluated by an impartial panel of experts in a public forum before any final decision is made.

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A few reasons why construction cost may triple if building occurs on top of the existing hospital buildings:

1) Complexity of integrating new structure with existing structure.
2) Upgrading existing structures to meet new building codes, seismic requirements, etc.
3) Working off hours - weekends, evening. Overtime.
4) Limited access to the site (difficulty of craning around existing buildings)
5) Remodel is ALWAYS more expensive thatn new construction.
6) Strict air quality and noise control requirements due to continuing hospital operations
7) Transportation costs to bring workers to current site (no parking available for them).