After 40 months of construction, the Cleveland Clinic is ready to celebrate the opening of two buildings characterized as monuments to 21st-century thinking in health-care delivery.
The Sydell and Arnold Miller Family Pavilion will be home to the Clinic's signature cardiovascular program and a new grand entrance at the corner of East 93rd and Euclid Avenue.
Tucked behind Miller on the 166-acre campus is the Glickman Tower, the new 12-story headquarters of the Urological and Kidney Institute, which has bragging rights as the Clinic's largest surgery center and one of it fastest growing programs.
Fronted by reflecting pools and rows of tulip trees that stretch to Chester Avenue, the glassy, C-shaped Miller Pavilion gives the Clinic a dramatic new look. But the buildings symbolize more than an investment in capacity and aesthetics.
Tracy Boulian/The Plain DealerThe new Sydell and Arnold Miller Family Pavilion at the Cleveland Clinic.
Patients first
The Clinic promises the buildings represent a new era of patient care. The buzzword these days is "patient-centered care." It encompasses everything from moving doctors closer to hospitalized patients, to piped-in music and patient rooms that are described as "comfortable as a well-appointed hotel room."
The emphasis on customer service coincides with a new era of patient expectations. It's also tied to growing demands for accountability of hospital performance. In a first-ever release of patient-satisfaction scores by Medicare, the Clinic this year scored below national averages in several key areas. To better please patients, the hospital last year hired its first "chief experience officer," an executive-level job. The quality movement, as it's called, is forcing hospitals to retool.
Brand investment
The buildings are also an investment in the Clinic's dominant brand name in a competitive health-care market.