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Photo by Jessa Pease.
St. Vincent’s expansion project breaks ground
Everyone at the ceremony was asked to join in with shovels provided by One Nineteen, so they could break ground together as a community.
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Photo by Jessa Pease.
Nan Priest
Executive vice president and chief strategy officer Nan Priest.
Three racks were filled with dozens of shovels on groundbreaking day, and they weren’t just for business officials.
When St. Vincent’s One Nineteen broke ground on its new expansion Oct. 30, the community-based healthcare facility asked everyone in the crowd to grab a shovel.
“We are actually going to break ground together because this is not St. Vincent’s Health System’s or One Nineteen’s facility, it is yours,” explained Nan Priest, the executive vice president and chief strategy officer for St. Vincent’s Health System.
Following the event, the shovels will be donated to community gardens as a part of St. Vincent’s efforts to provide greater access to healthy foods.
Priest said it was a part of One Nineteen’s commitment to the community, one that started about 10 years ago when the campus was first open. The expansion was only an extention of that original plan.
“One out of five of our patients at our Birmingham facility live in this corridor, and that was the reason that we made the initial commitment for this health and wellness center,” Priest said. “This is just a continuation of that commitment to try to provide services close to home.”
The 40,000-square-foot expansion will allow One Nineteen to provide the space for surgery, urgent care and additional doctors to join the system. The project is scheduled to be completed in fall of 2015, and work will begin immediately.
The addition includes a Certificate of Need-approved ambulatory surgery center, four state-of-the-art operating rooms, two procedure rooms, professional office space and an urgent care center. Surgeries such as general surgery, ophthalmology, orthopedics, podiatry, plastic surgery, pain management and gynecology will become available to patients.
Kirk Allen, a Meadow Brook resident and president and chief operating officer for St. Vincent’s Ambulatory Health Network, touched on the amount of hard work and planning that went into this project.
“This facility is a great example of novel ways that healthcare can be delivered in a quality, compassionate and effective way in the communities where our patients live,” Allen said. “Anybody who has been to One Nineteen and seen a physician or had a procedure wants to come back. It’s close to home, it’s easy to park and it’s a great place to receive services. We are proud to be able to expand those services through this project.”
The campus was originally built to be convenient for people living further out down U.S. 280, but the medical director at One Nineteen, John Farley, MD, said One Nineteen draws people from all over the place. Although people initially didn’t want to make the drive to One Nineteen from places like Mountain Brook, now Farley said the professionalism and the beauty of the facility makes people want to receive treatment at One Nineteen.
“We’ve been very excited to be a part of this,” Farley said. “We are excited to see the ongoing growth. We are going to continue to grow our practice.”
Farley said he hopes to have any kind of specialist at the campus in the future, so One Nineteen can provide any service a patient could need. The organization plans to continue to move forward, and asked the community to trust the vision St. Vincent’s has.
“Where else in this area can you find a facility that focuses on that healthier prevention aspect?” Priest asked. “But we are not finished. We have only just begun.”
