Med offerings altered off campus

The University of Pennsylvania Health System is doing a little spring cleaning, rearranging and remodeling this year.

In addition to the expansive new Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine - set to open in June next to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania - Penn Medicine at Rittenhouse, located at 18th and South Streets, will also see some development and expansion.

Although Penn Medicine at Rittenhouse will not be fully operational until July, several doctors are now conducting their clinical practices from the site and the University is taking steps to prepare for the opening.

This week, Penn will be closing the urgent care center that was opened in response to the closure of the Graduate Hospital previously located there when Penn purchased the site last spring. The urgent care center is closing due to underuse, UPHS officials said.

"The urgent care center was designed to fill a void when the Graduate Hospital closed, but it wasn't the case," said Susan Phillips, the chief of staff at the dean's office of the School of Medicine. "They were only seeing about 10 people a day."

The closure of the urgent care center will free up space for the various specialized services that will be moved to Penn Medicine at Rittenhouse.

By the Rittenhouse complex's grand opening in July, it will house a 58-bed inpatient rehabilitation facility, a long-term acute care center, a hospice unit, radiology services and the Measey Simulation Suite, which will allow doctors and students to simulate medical procedures.

Some of these services will be relocated from HUP and expanded at Rittenhouse to serve more patients.

With the relocation of these services, there will be more beds available for patients at HUP.

"This was a great opportunity to take a space that used to be a hospital and continue devoting it to heath care," Phillips said. "This will free up space at HUP for more critical care."

Phillips also said plans are in the preliminary stages to use some of the space for a free clinic, although nothing has been acted upon yet.

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