Children's continues to expand services

Sterling Medical Center

Children's Hospital Boston recently announced two exciting new expansion opportunities-the purchase of Sterling Medical Center in Waltham, and a potential relationship with Tufts-New England Medical Center's Floating Hospital.

The purchase of Sterling Medical Center represents a key effort in the hospital's quest to deliver better services to patients throughout Eastern Massachusetts in locations closer to their homes. Located at the former Waltham Hospital site, the center includes over 400,000 gross square feet of space on an 11-acre site within minutes of I-95 and the Mass Pike. Approximately 120,000 square feet of the space is currently leased to an array of health care services. The purchase is expected to be completed over the next several months, after which the hospital will maintain current leases and undertake a strategic planning process to determine which Children's services could successfully be moved to the Waltham site.

"By providing more secondary and ambulatory care in the community, we will free up our Longwood campus for more intense tertiary and quaternary services for the region while continuing to meet the medical needs of the children of Boston," says James Mandell, MD, Children's president and CEO. "As a result, patients, their families and referring physicians will have more timely and convenient access to our services."

Also this fall, Children's entered into an exclusive negotiation with Tufts-New England Medical Center to develop an integrated pediatric care program at Floating Hospital.

"Our goal is to create a patient-centered maternal/child health care network of outstanding clinical excellence, depth and breadth," says Chief Operating Officer Sandra Fenwick. "We are seeking to preserve and enhance our roles as a teaching hospital, provider of vital services to Boston's children, and leader in clinical and basic research."

The affiliation would include integration of specialty programs, but those arrangements have yet to be agreed upon. During the next phase of talks, the hospitals will determine a number of factors, like which programs would be integrated, where they would be located and the structural design of the relationship.