The MetroHealth System, Cleveland

Founded in 1837, The MetroHealth System is a safety-net provider operating five hospitals, four emergency departments, and 20 health centers in and around Cleveland. It serves more than 300,000 patients and employs more than 8,000 doctors, nurses, and other staff members.

MetroHealth is also an academic medical center in partnership with Case Western Reserve University’s School of Medicine and home to a Level 1 trauma center as well as Ohio’s only adult and pediatric trauma and burn center.

In October 2022, MetroHealth completed its replacement acute care hospital, The Glick Center. (For an in-depth profile on the project, read here.)

The project serves as the anchor to a $1 billion investment by the organization into its main campus and the surrounding community, an economically challenged, highly diverse area on Cleveland’s west side. In fact, it set into motion a series of initiatives designed to support MetroHealth’s burgeoning mission to go beyond healthcare to improve the health and lives of its patients and community.

That’s meant supporting its neighbors in numerous ways, from creating a new transit line with bus stops on its main campus and other locations, providing health and science curriculum in a high school located inside the hospital, and building affordable housing on-site for qualified community members.

Meanwhile, as part of the construction of the Glick Center, MetroHealth saw great opportunity in the campus itself. Once the old hospital is demolished, the site will boast significant green space to further connect it to surrounding neighbors and deliver much-needed parkland to the dense, urban location.

Inside the new hospital, the city itself is reflected via a robust art program featuring local artists, a performance area for theater and dance, and a color palette inspired by murals and other public art pieces in nearby neighborhoods to establish a truly welcoming environment.

And to make sure this investment will serve the community for years to come, MetroHealth embraced the idea of flexibility and adaptability well beyond industry best practice, integrating a “process neutral.” This approach utilizes universal design throughout its 312 patient rooms as well as the interventional platform, in addition to modular, movable components throughout, to ensure the hospital can change to suit caregivers’ needs day to day, and year to year.

Additionally, within the past year, the system opened projects including a new facility for advanced cellular immunotherapies. The project makes MetroHealth the first safety-net hospital in the U.S. to bring such next-generation cancer treatments to patients. Additionally, the organization opened the 112-bed MetroHealth Cleveland Heights Behavioral Health Hospital that consolidates services for adult, geriatric, and adolescent patients and fills a critical need for metal health care in that community.

These recent efforts, and many that have come before them, showcase a health system that’s redefining itself through an evolution in the way it delivers care and the spaces in which that care takes place, serving the specific needs of its community members and establishing the system as a model for all.

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