Inside Hartford HealthCare’s nearly $1B hospital expansion

Hartford HealthCare has invested heavily in expanding its outpatient services, but the Connecticut health system is also undertaking a transformation of its flagship hospital campus.

The system is investing nearly $1 billion in the expansion of Hartford Hospital, an 867-bed medical center founded in 1854. At the center of the project, Hartford is building a new, 14-story tower with patient rooms and procedures. Construction is slated to begin next year, and the new tower is expected to open in 2031.

With the project, Hartford is planning to build 250 private “smart rooms” and will revamp the emergency department. The plans also call for a new patient arrival center and a healing garden.

Karen Goyette, executive vice president & chief strategy and transformation officer of Hartford HealthCare, says the project is essentially a reinvention of the campus.

“We are about to build a very significant expansion, which is overdue at our tertiary flagship, Hartford Hospital,” Goyette tells Chief Healthcare Executive®.

“It'll be great to have that campus, using AI in our building mechanisms and really creating a smart campus, so people have that same level of confidence every journey, every piece along the way, as they enter that campus,” she says.

Hartford HealthCare has invested heavily in its ambulatory offerings in recent years. The system now boasts a network of 50 urgent care centers and is offering more outpatient facilities across Connecticut.

Goyette says the bolstered ambulatory options are a critical part of improving care, but she also says it’s time to revamp its main hospital campus.

“I'm so, so passionate about our ambulatory space, and you know what we've done, in that world to improve consumer experience everywhere, from parking, etc.,” Goyette says. “But we really need to go back and do that same work in our acute care campuses, and that's just what we're doing with this project.”

Goyette actually says it’s more than a project, and really more akin to a “movement.”

“It's not about just the tower,” Goyette says. “It's about the arrival experience, it's about what happens before you even arrive.”

“It’s really supporting our communities and building up every area around it, so you know, as much as we see care moving into those ambulatory settings, the folks that are unfortunately going to need inpatient care are going to have comorbidities, going to have really complex kind of issues going on. The more that we can do to support them in that space is really our goal,” she says.

While Hartford sees its ambulatory strategy as a linchpin in creating more access, Goyette also acknowledged the likelihood that with an aging population, more patients are going to require acute care.

The new tower will include 216 private inpatient beds. There will be three floors designated for surgical procedures, including rooms for procedures such as cardiac catheterization, gastroenterology and ambulatory surgery care, along with recovery bays. The plans call for a two-story atrium connecting to a new arrival center.

The health system is also going to overhaul and expand Hartford Hospital’s emergency department. Hartford says the expansion is necessary to address overcrowding and boarding in the emergency department, a problem at many hospitals. The department will get new treatment beds and redesigned waiting and triage areas.

Goyette says it is “probably one of the busiest emergency departments in the country.”

Hartford is teaming with GoHealth to build an urgent care center outside of Hartford Hospital. Goyette says there’s a need for more non-acute care services for patients near the hospital. She also says the urgent care center may alleviate some of the volume in the emergency department, where some people are going for basic care.

“It's really a little bit of, unfortunately, a medical office desert outside of that acute care campus,” Goyette says.

Hartford HealthCare CEO Jeffrey Flaks spoke with Chief Healthcare Executive in an interview for our new video series, Changes, earlier this year. Flaks said his goal is for Hartford to be “the most consumer-centric health system in America.”

He cited the system’s investments in outpatient care, behavioral health, AI, and a host of other initiatives to make care more accessible and affordable.

“We really think that we have an opportunity to uplift health care in Connecticut, but actually across the country, because we're a great example of a system that's urban, rural, academic, teaching, suburban,” he says.