Glimpse of NEW Fargo Sanford Medical Center

$494–million Medical Center Offers Something Different

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You drive past its construction site along I–94 and Veteran’s Boulevard and now Sanford Health has given us a glimpse of what is to come.

Their new $494–million medical center offers something different on its 10–floors but it won’t open for years.

The new Sanford Medical Center plans to offer the Fargo area a hospital experience like none of their others.

Starting with the “X”–shape the facility is constructed to ensure patients that every room will have quite the view.

Paul Richard says, “There’s a reason for that. It provides that everyone in this facility will have a view so they’re not looking into the wall of adjacent wing of the hospital.”

In striving to give the patients and their families a better care experience, the medical center will operate in a “on–stage” and “off–stage” mode.

The Sanford Medical Fargo President says, “On–stage is where patients, families and visitors have access to. Behind stage or back stage is really where employees and a lot of our facility services will move around so there will be a separation between a lot of the things you typically see today.”

This theme is clearly demonstrated in how their elevators are constructed and to be used.

Richard says, “The separation of the elevators…there are four elevators dedicated to family and patients where there are seven elevators dedicated to staff and all the things that we need to do by way of supplies and equipment moving through the building.”

The fourth floor is the mechanical area not open to the public. The furnace and boiling system will be on this floor allowing for an even distribution of hot and cold are up and down.

“Also on this floor will be the helicopter hanger and the sleeping quarters for the pilots. The hanger is on top of the ER garage.

Sanford Children’s Hospital will be on the ninth floor featuring neonatal and pediatric care units as well as a Cully’s Kids Cabin playroom space. The tenth floor will be the Sanford Family Birth Center including triage, labor and delivery rooms.

“The rooms are being designed so that the newborn child is housed with the mother in her room. Really not going to have what they call a newborn nursery.”

Preparing for the future, the entire seventh then parts of the second, third and eighth floors will have shelled rooms which will not be completed at this time until necessary. They will be for operations, inpatient beds and therapy space.

“We are obviously building this for the future as well and so we look at it from the standpoint of what do we think we will need in the future.”

The new Sanford medical center building project is on schedule and should open in 2017.