Bronson Advanced Radiology Services To Break Ground on New FacilityJuly 24, 2007 KALAMAZOO, Mich. — Site work begins this week on a $6.8 million construction project of a new facility for Bronson Advanced Radiology Services (BARS) at 524 South Park St. in downtown Kalamazoo. Bronson Healthcare Group and Advanced Radiology Services, PC-Kalamazoo Division, established Bronson Advanced Radiology Services as a joint venture in 2004. The physician group, which traces its roots to 1897, has occupied its current facility for more than 30 years. Originally a church, the building has been renovated many times over the years to accommodate the growing service. The new nearly 27,000 square foot facility will be constructed according to LEED-certified building standards creating a more efficient, eco-friendly facility. The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System™ is the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction, and operation of high performance green buildings. The new BARS facility will also be more patient- and physician-friendly due to improved service adjacencies and flow within the building, as well as the wireless technology incorporated for enhanced communication. Dr. Eduardo Crotte, medical director for BARS, says, “We are extremely pleased to be able to enhance services for our patients while maintaining our downtown location. We have more than a century of service in this community and certainly did not want to disrupt that by seeking a building site further out of town. Once our new building is in place, the old one will be taken down and that space will become our new parking lot. It’s going to work out really well.” Diagnostic services currently available at the BARS location include magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computed tomography (CT), mammography, bone densitometry (DEXA), ultrasound, and general diagnostic X-ray. Once the new facility opens in summer 2008, nuclear medicine testing and a lab draw station will be added. The 23 radiologists on staff interpret medical images for BARS, Bronson Methodist Hospital and other sites throughout southwest Michigan, and perform thousands of procedures within their respective subspecialties each year. The construction management company for the new Bronson Advanced Radiology Services facility is CSM Group of Galesburg, Michigan; the architect is Diekema Hamann Architecture + Engineering of Kalamazoo. About Bronson Methodist Hospital Bronson Methodist Hospital, located at 601 John St. in downtown Kalamazoo, Mich., is the flagship of Bronson Healthcare Group, a not-for-profit healthcare system serving all of southwest Michigan and northern Indiana. With 343 licensed beds and all private rooms, Bronson Methodist Hospital provides care in virtually every specialty—cardiology, orthopedics, surgery, emergency medicine, neurology, oncology—with advanced capabilities in critical care as a Level I Trauma Center; in neurological care as a JCAHO certified Primary Stroke Center; in cardiac care as the region’s only accredited Chest Pain Center; in obstetrics as the leading BirthPlace and only high-risk pregnancy center in southwest Michigan, and in pediatrics as one of only four children's hospitals in the state. The hospital is the recipient of the 2005 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the nation's highest presidential honor for quality and organizational performance excellence, and was named one of the nation's 100 Top Hospitals for 2005 by Solucient. Bronson Healthcare Group is one of Kalamazoo’s largest employers. For four consecutive years, it has been ranked by Working Mother magazine and for three straight years by FORTUNE as one of the nation’s 100 best companies to work for. With a workforce of more than 4,100, Bronson makes a significant contribution to the local economy. Annually, Bronson provides more than $48 million in community benefits through outreach and charitable care for the un- and under-insured. Bronson also serves the largest percentage of Medicaid patients of any Michigan hospital outside of the Detroit area. ###
|
| |||||||||||
