Inova breaks ground on two hospitals in the Northern Virginia area on Monday. The Inova Alexandria Hospital at Landmark, on the old Landmark Mall site, will replace the Seminary Road hospital, while the Inova Franconia-Springfield Hospital will add to the campus of the existing Inova HealthPlex at Franconia-Springfield.
“We’re very excited,” says Heather Russell, the vice president of Eastern Region development for Inova, about the state-of-the-art facilities.
She says the Landmark site will have “all of the same services that are currently located at the Alexandria hospital,” with full women’s services including labor and delivery and a neonatal intensive care unit. It will include a total of 227 beds, as well as the Inova Schar Cancer Center, a medical office building, and specialty clinics.
The Inova Franconia-Springfield Hospital site will take on the emergency department that’s currently in the existing HealthPlex and also will have 144 beds.
The groundbreaking in Springfield is set for 1 p.m., and the Alexandria groundbreaking will follow at 2:30 p.m.
Russell says both projects are on schedule to open by the end of 2028.
Inova recently started a first-ever comprehensive fundraising campaign, with a goal of raising $500 million by the end of the decade. Money raised will go toward the hospital projects, renovations to its emergency department in Fairfax, and other needs.
New Health Center in Del Ray Opening This Fall
Meanwhile, Inova is also opening a health center in Del Ray on November 6. The Oakville Triangle Healthplex on Fannon Street will include an emergency department, an imaging department, an ambulatory surgery center, and operating rooms. It’s a mile from the Potomac Yard Metro station.
“What this facility allows us to do,” Russell says, “is provide health care to a community that traditionally has not had health care in the backyard,” as well as in the area of Virginia Tech’s Innovation Campus, Amazon’s headquarters, and more. “So that will really open the doors to a community that has had to travel in Northern Virginia traffic for healthcare to be able to get it right down the road.”
Looking at Health Care Differently
Russell says the new hospitals in Alexandria and Springfield reflect the new ways Inova is looking at health care. For one, she says, “health care is shifting from inpatient to outpatient, and so we’re trying to get ahead of the needs of the community” as the Northern Virginia population continues to grow.
Meanwhile, the design of the inpatient care facilities reflects what they see as a continued increase in “acuity, or the level of sickness,” of inpatient care. To that end, Russell says, all of the rooms have been designed in such a way that they can be used as intensive care rooms if necessary.
“Historically, across the country, hospitals have always been built around the providers’ needs and wants, and we flipped that script, so everything that we have done has been focused around the patient experience, the family experience, and also our team member experience.”
She cites the use of as much natural light as possible in the new facilities as well as monitors for patients that can provide not only entertainment but translation services and consultations.
Inova built 10,000 square feet of mock-up rooms — patient rooms, operating rooms, X-ray rooms, and others — to simulate real-world patient care conditions, Russell says. “It really allowed for hands-on experience while designing to get this to where it needs to be for our patients and our team members.”
Russell, a critical care nurse by training, says Inova worked not only with outside consultants but with more than 500 of its own workers in every department to find out what they needed.
“It’s a different way of thinking of how we’re going to do things,” Russell says. “Let’s think about what’s best for the future of healthcare delivery.”
Feature image rendering of Inova’s planned Alexandria hospital courtesy Inova
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