Maine Medical Center (MMC) announced it plans to modify its Malone Family Tower construction project to address access to care and capacity challenges and to achieve additional operating efficiencies.

Construction of the 265,000-square-foot building is underway on Congress Street, currently consisting of mainly excavation and foundation work. This new cardiovascular medical tower is the final piece of MMC’s Master Facilities Plan, and will reorient the hospital to Congress Street, expand availability of private rooms and provide state-of-the-art procedure rooms centered on cardiovascular care.

MMC plans to seek city and state approval for modifications to the Malone Family Tower including: Acceleration of fifth floor buildout schedule so the floor and its 32 new beds will open in 2024; expansion of MMC’s bed license from 637 to 700; and construction of a new sterile processing department on the sixth floor.

At 20,000 square feet, the sixth floor will be recessed from the building edge with a smaller footprint than the floors below. The sterile processing facilities will be above the new operating procedure rooms and adjacent to the existing operating rooms in the Bean building providing efficient and easy travel for surgical supplies. Floors six and seven are smaller than the lower floors with floor seven consisting of staff rooms and the physical pedestrian linkage to the existing Bramhall campus.

“The need for getting additional beds online sooner is extremely apparent. MMC consistently sees record inpatient census levels, and the medical severity of the cases has increased, as has the average length of stay,” said MMC President Jeff Sanders. “These increases in patient volume, medical severity and length of stay have exceeded our initial projections for demand. The pandemic has added to that challenge significantly.”

The decision to replace the sterile processing department – which sterilizes all instruments for surgeries and other procedures – was made after further study of current and future needs. With this plan, MMC will almost double the size of its sterile processing facilities and be prepared to meet the growing demand for procedures. The placement of the sterile processing facilities directly above the new Malone Family Tower procedure rooms will provide increased efficiency and best use of space.

Sanders said addressing these needs while the project is in early construction stages is critical and the construction teams are ready to carry them out. “We look forward to working with city and state officials to fully present the need and how these modifications will benefit our patients and the region by allowing us to continue to provide world-class care while also expanding access to that care.”

The modifications will add about $52 million to the cost of MMC’s master facilities plan and add about six months to the schedule, bringing the total investment to $588.4 million. The Malone Family Tower is expected to open in 2023 and the new sterile processing department in 2024 pending regulatory approvals. Work on the tower project began in January 2020.

The new tower allows MMC to internally reorganize cardiovascular services within the hospital campus, which means timely, efficient access for patients and care teams and reduction of time and effort spent traveling through the hospital corridors. The 19 procedure rooms will align with industry best practices providing adequate space to treat patients ultimately improving the experience at MMC.

These new investments and MMC’s master facilities plan are supported in part by generous community philanthropy through The NEXT 150: The Campaign for Maine Medical Center, which nears its goal of $150 million with the hope that more will be raised to support the build-out of these two floors. Visit https://next150.mmc.org/ for more information.

For more information and to receive regular updates on the MMC Modernization project’s progress, please visit www.mmc.org/modernization