One of the first hospitals in the City of Detroit, Henry Ford Hospital has been a leader in health services, consistently ranked as one of the best hospitals in the nation. The hospital was originally designed with all private beds, but as the population grew, the hospital converted those private rooms to semi-privates.

In 1998, Harley Ellis Devereaux designed the Henry Ford II Pavilion, a 193,000 sf 4-story building that houses acute care services and patient beds. Recently, Harley Ellis Devereaux designed a two story vertical addition to house new medical/surgical beds as the first step in converting most semi-private beds to all privates. Henry Ford Hospital also desired to provide for nurses to be closer to patients, increase patient safety and provide nurse support services close by.

Designed to accept two additional floors, the 31,000 sf floor plates will accommodate: Eighty total patient rooms, twenty intensive care and sixty medical/surgical which are capable of being converted to ICUs if future needs dictate; Nursing pods of 10 patient rooms each; Nurse alcoves outside rooms for charting; Toilet/shower rooms adjacent to patient beds
A combination of separate and common support facilities for each pod; Updated information technology infrastructure for the entire building; New rooftop engineering services including new chilled water, domestic water and emergency power loops connecting the campus.

Issues for discussion:
Preplanning infrastructure to accept vertical growth
Addressing code changes between phases
Reduce throw-away construction in the first phase
Incremental cost additions to plan for vertical expansion
Constructability issues over occupied spaces