Bon Secours St. Mary’s Hospital in Richmond, Virginia, is breaking ground later this year on a construction project that will add this tower to the campus. The tower is to open in 2028.Later this year, Bon Secours St. Mary’s Hospital in Richmond, Virginia, is set to begin construction on a $370 million project that will add a tower and renovate existing facilities.
The project will modernize the campus, elevate the facility’s tertiary and quaternary care capabilities, privatize patient rooms, add capacity to the cardiac and neurological intensive care units, improve the women’s and children’s services
unit and add shelled space for growth, according to Bryan Lee, president of Bon Secours St. Mary’s Hospital and Richmond Community Hospital. The hospitals are part of Bon Secours’ Richmond market, which is part of Bon Secours Mercy Health.
Lee says the project is necessary in part because St. Mary’s is experiencing a shortage of intensive care unit beds. The new tower will nearly double the facility’s critical care capacity. The new project also is needed because there is projected
growth of about 8% in tertiary care and about 20.5% in quaternary care over the next five years.
Lee notes that the Richmond area could grow by as much as 5% over the next five years. He says that in addition to the population growth, the community is aging. Also, the continuum of care is shifting at St. Mary’s, as it is in many communities,
from acute to primary care and from inpatient to outpatient care, Lee says. The expansion project will account for these shifts.
Tower construction is to begin later this year, and the new facility is to open in 2028. After the tower opens, St. Mary’s will renovate legacy buildings, including expanding a women’s specialty care unit. Lee notes that multiple floors of
the new tower will link to the legacy building with pedestrian walkways. The interconnected spaces will provide physical connections for new institutes at the hospital, including a women’s and children’s institute.
The project enables the relocation of the hospital’s helipad to a more appropriate place.
The new tower will have two floors of shelled space for future use.
The hospital’s bed count of 391 will not change with the construction.
Lee says there will be about 375 new jobs created at St. Mary’s as a result of the expansion of services and capacity.