Two new UF Health Shands Hospital buildings will be completed in 2018.
The buildings will house the Heart and Vascular Hospital and Neuromedicine Hospital, said Brad Pollitt, the UF Health Shands vice president of facilities.
The departments are currently in the main hospital. The buildings are expected to open by February or March 2018.
The cost of this project is $415 million, wrote Rossana Passaniti, UF Health’s media relation manager, in an email.
The vertical construction in which the structure of the building is built is complete.
Construction workers are now building the interior walls.
Pollitt said about 30 percent of the hospitals are complete.
“We are hoping to beat that opening date, and we are on track to do so,” he said.
The two buildings together will be about 530,000 square feet, and a 600-spot parking garage will be built, Pollitt said.
The buildings will include outpatient clinics, ICU beds and 20 operating rooms.
“We now have two places for patients to go that is designed just for their needs,” Pollitt said. “It will be a lot more streamlined and efficient.”
Rahul Benda, a UF chemical engineering sophomore on the pre-medicine track, said he expects it will be easier having the new buildings.
“The current structure is very built upon and maze-like,” the 19-year-old said.
He said it will be simpler for the patients to get the care they need with buildings for a specific purpose.
The new buildings will still be connected to the main Shands Hospital by a tunnel and bridge, Pollitt said.
“We have world-class physicians here, and it gives us an opportunity to have a world-class facility to support them,” he said.
Contact Meryl Kornfield at mkornfield@alligator.org and follow her on Twitter @MerylKornfield.
