Today, Bell Hospital is renowned for offering personal, quality care to the people of Marquette County and across Upper Michigan. That tradition will continue with plans to construct a new state of the art facility. The $35 Million building will be a modern, single-level patient care structure with a strong focus on patient convenience and staffing efficiency.

The proposed new hospital will allow Bell to provide a modern healthcare delivery system that is better suited to meet a changed national healthcare delivery system which has shifted many services from in-patient care to out-patient care. The highly-efficient facility will offer patients clinical and hospital services on one campus, all within feet of each other. The new facility will be the hallmark of healthcare delivery, convenience and efficiency…unsurpassed by anything else available in the area.

Where will it be located?
The new hospital will be built on a 35-acre parcel of property that has been anonymously donated to the Bell Foundation. The site is off Old Farm Road and Lakeshore Drive in the City of Ishpeming, which is just north of the Jubilee Grocery Store on U.S. Highway 41.

What is the timeframe?
Groundbreaking is expected in the Spring of 2007. Construction is estimated to take 18 months.

What size will the facility be?
The new hospital will be a 130,000 square foot structure. That includes on-site clinic space for many physicians. The current facility exceeds 170,000 square feet. The proposed facility is much more efficient in regards to space, utilities, staffing and patient convenience.

Why is a new facility necessary?
The current Bell Hospital structure dates back to 1917, with additions built in 1954 and 1975. The facility was built in an era when Bell Hospital’s census frequently exceeded 140 patients per day and did not have space to house equipment required to practice modern medicine. Now, due to modern medical technology and techniques, the hospital census is roughly ten percent of what it used to be. This decrease is indicative of a national trend that shifts patient care to an out-patient setting. For example, it was not uncommon to perform exploratory surgery requiring a patient to recover with a lengthy hospital stay. Today, those procedures can be performed in an out-patient setting with non-invasive computerized tomography (CT scans) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRIs). Now Bell Hospital has the opportunity to start with a clean slate and design the facility to match the needs of modern medicine. This means having all patient services on one floor which creates patient convenience and staffing efficiencies not achievable in the current four-story facility.

What will happen to the current building?
Bell Administrators are currently exploring other uses for the structure. Several businesses have expressed an interest in occupying the newer sections of the building. The sections that were built in 1917 will likely be removed.

What will happen to the Teal Lake Medical Center?
The Teal Lake Medical Center will still be utilized for physician clinics, rehabilitation services, office space for non-medical staff and conference centers.

Who will build the new hospital?
A construction management team approach has been selected consisting of architectural firm Hobbs & Black of Ann Arbor, MI and Boldt Construction of Appleton, WI. It is the hospital board's goal to involve as many local workers as possible to perform the
individual jobs.