Long-awaited Valleywise Health Medical Center in Phoenix welcomes 1st patients
Jun 14, 2024, 11:00 AM
PHOENIX — The long-awaited new Valleywise Health Medical Center is now open in east Phoenix after welcoming its first patients on Thursday.
Construction on the 10-story hospital at 24th and Roosevelt streets started in February 2020, nearly six years after voters approved funding for the project.
“The new Valleywise Health Medical Center has been decades in the making,” Steve Purves, Valleywise Health President and CEO, said in a press release. “We’re thrilled to open it to the community today and grateful for all the support we’ve received since our funding measure was passed in 2014.”
Two previously announced opening dates — in October 2023 and April of this year — came and went before staff started moving more than 200 patients from the legacy Valleywise hospital into the state-of-the-art facility next door early Thursday.
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What does the new Valleywise Health Medical Center hospital offer?
The new campus features a 34,550-square-foot emergency department with three trauma bays. Other features include 88 private rooms, a dedicated pediatric wing, a large physical occupational therapy room, a hyperbaric chamber and ground floor and rooftop helipads.
Additionally, the Diane & Bruce Halle Arizona Burn Center occupies an entire floor.
“The new hospital was designed to put patients first,” Purves said. “It incorporates both the latest technology and design improvements that will ensure comfort for both patients and their families. Beyond that, it makes unprecedented resources available to the hundreds of residents that Valleywise Health doctors train every year.”
What is Valleywise Health?
Valleywise Health, which was renamed from Maricopa Integrated Health System in 2019, is the Phoenix area’s safety net health care system.
The Valleywise Health Medical Center is Arizona’s only public teaching hospital. To that end, the new campus includes and space for research and teaching.
“It’s hard to overstate the value of having a world-class public teaching hospital right here in this neighborhood,” Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego said in the release. “Valleywise Health has been a fixture in our community for over 100 years, and I think it’s safe to say the $935 million commitment to bring this new facility to fruition couldn’t have been put to better use.”
