University of Michigan Health System Embarks on New Project

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — The University of Michigan Health System’s (UMHS) board of regents approved a $160 million project that will provide a 139,000-square-foot facility for clinical pathology activities and renovate another 47,000 square feet of existing space.

UMHS confirmed the approval on April 16. Teams at UMHS test samples of tissue, blood and other bodily fluids for patients of all ages. The results can reveal risks, signs of disease, response to treatment and can help influence doctors’ decisions. The new facility will help UMHS staff to continue giving patients and doctors test results with faster and higher reliability.

The new facility will occupy four vacant buildings at UMHS’s North Campus Research Complex (NCRC), less than three miles from the main medical campus in Ann Arbor. It’s the first clinical use of space at NCRC, which UMHS purchased from Pfizer six years ago. The new facility will allow UMHS to unite more than 450 faculty and staff who currently work in 10 locations.

In addition to the new NCRC facility, the project includes renovations at two existing locations, in University Hospital and an adjoining building on the medical campus. UMHS will dedicate these to urgent, or “STAT,” tests for patients in emergency, critical care and inpatient settings, while non-STAT, or less urgent, tests will be performed at NCRC.

“Through this project, we’ll create an ideal clinical testing experience for patients and their care teams, while improving efficiency, the work environment and training opportunities for our staff and faculty,” said T. Anthony Denton, the acting chief executive officer and chief operating officer of the UMHS Hospitals and Health Centers, in a statement

Demand for UMHS lab tests, from blood sugars to complex genetic tests for rare diseases, has risen nearly 8 percent every year for the past five years, according to UMHS. UMHS offers more than 1,100 types of tests. About 8 percent of tests are done for patients whose doctors elsewhere send samples to UMHS.

“As the era of personalized medicine dawns, we predict rapidly increasing demand for molecular diagnostics that can allow medical teams to customize treatment to the individual patient in ways that we couldn’t dream of even a decade ago,” said Charles Parkos, M.D., Ph.D., chair of pathology at the UMHS medical school, in a statement “This project will prepare us for this new era, and the growth in state-of-the-art testing it will likely bring.”

The new space at NCRC will also include faculty offices and facilities for training the medical residents and clinical fellows who start their medical careers in pathology.

The entire project will be designed by the architectural firm of Tsoi/Kobus and Associates of Cambridge, Mass., and the renovation will create 118 construction jobs.