Ambulatory Pavilion

The Western Pennsylvania Hospital was the first in Pittsburgh to establish medical care on an outpatient basis through the Mellon Pavilion ambulatory care facility. In recent years, with healthcare's increased emphasis on outpatient care, West Penn's ambulatory care and surgery facilities have experienced a tremendous surge in patient volume. Due to increased demand, ambulatory care facilities have outgrown Mellon Pavilion and are located in various sites throughout the hospital. Also, because the hospital does not have enough outpatient surgical suites, these surgeries are often performed in operating rooms, taking space and resources away from more serious, urgent surgeries. The current state of ambulatory services at West Penn is neither an efficient use of hospital resources, nor readily comprehensible for patients and their families, who sometimes have difficulty finding the appropriate clinic within the hospital. West Penn also lacks space to accommodate new physician practices – a significant concern in the wake of the closing of St. Francis Medical Center, as the East End faces the loss of many physicians who provided care and services for residents and contributed to the economies of Bloomfield and Lawrenceville.

To address this need, and in conjunction with the hospital's master facilities plan, West Penn will build a new four-story Ambulatory Pavilion on a site across from the hospital between the School of Nursing and the Millvale Parking Garage. The Ambulatory Pavilion will house all of the hospital's outpatient clinics and surgery centers and will include an atrium that will connect it to privately developed space for new physician practices. The Ambulatory Pavilion will provide new facilities designed to accommodate the increasing number of outpatient surgeries and visits, freeing space inside the hospital for in-patient services while giving patients and their families a smaller, less intimidating, easy-to-navigate facility for outpatient services.

To support this important work, West Penn will create a unified, patient-focused center for outpatient cancer services. Among other improvements, the new center will include an upgraded linear accelerator. Construction of the Ambulatory Pavilion is key to this improvement, because the hospital itself lacks space to accommodate the new equipment. The new linear accelerator will include features that reduce patient set-up time, expand the use of radiation therapy beyond the treatment of prostate, brain, and head and neck diseases to other body areas, and increase patient comfort and safety. West Penn's will be the only cancer center in Western Pennsylvania to include radiation therapy, making ours a true and complete outpatient cancer center. This new center will centralize this and other outpatient cancer care services and provide a comfortable, supportive space for patients and their families.

The Ambulatory Pavilion will be a caring, convenient, easy-to-navigate building designed specifically for outpatient care and cancer care. By raising funds for the construction of a new Ambulatory Pavilion, The Western Pennsylvania Hospital Foundation will enable The Western Pennsylvania Hospital to better meet the needs of its outpatients, provide better care for cancer patients and their families, and make a stronger contribution to the health of our community. The cost of the new Ambulatory Pavilion including facilities for outpatient cancer services will be $25 million.