CATHOLIC HEALTH INITIATIVES
Alegent Creighton Health plans to build a new academic medical center on the campus of Alegent Creighton Health Bergan Mercy Medical Center by late 2016. Programs and services currently offered at Alegent Creighton Health Creighton University Medical Center will locate to the new facility. The creation of the new academic and clinical medical center will cost about $145 million to $157 million. Both the existing and planned academic medical center are in Omaha, Neb.
Currently, the 200-bed Creighton University Medical Center is located near Creighton University — nearly 10 miles from the 400-bed Bergan Mercy. Richard Hachten II, the president and chief executive of Alegent Creighton, said Alegent Creighton has yet to determine whether the name or bed count of Creighton University Medical Center will change with the relocation of services.
During students' first two years of medical school, they take classes and take part in clinical simulation at Creighton University. During their third and fourth years, they train at hospitals and clinics throughout Omaha. An Alegent acquisition of Creighton University Medical Center from Creighton University and Tenet Healthcare in 2012 made Alegent's 11 hospitals and other facilities the primary teaching sites for the university's health sciences schools. Alegent's Bergan Mercy is one of these teaching sites.
On the vacated campus of Creighton University Medical Center, Alegent Creighton plans to build a freestanding emergency center and an ambulatory center offering primary care, specialty care and wellness services.
According to Alegent Creighton leaders, integrating the new academic medical center into the Alegent Creighton clinical system will help the system to better navigate health care reform and to help make health care more affordable and higher education more efficient. According to Dr. Robert "Bo" Dunlay, dean of the school of medicine at Creighton University, the setup of the academic medical center will give students a greater opportunity to take part in interdisciplinary clinical teams and to prepare to work in medical home models that are increasingly prevalent under health care reform. Dunlay said the new setup of the academic medical center also will reduce redundancy in educational programs.
Dunlay said with the relocation of services to the Bergan Mercy campus, Alegent Creighton also is expanding Creighton University Medical Center's clinical, research and training capabilities, in part by creating centers of excellence in these three areas. The system is recruiting basic science researchers and clinical investigators to improve the system's capabilities in these areas.
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