UCSF’s innovative hospital complex will mark a new era in patient care.

Construction of UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay is well underway, with the building’s exterior panels and glass being installed, and the interior studs creating a maze inside.

On a recent hard hat tour of the site, Mary Phillips, an architect and UCSF project manager for interior design, provided a special look at some of what will make the new hospital complex so special.

Highlights of the tour — including the hospital lobby, terraced rooftop gardens, and a patient room in the new UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital — can be seen in this video.

Now more than 100 years old, UCSF Medical Center is expanding to Mission Bay, where an innovative 289-bed complex will feature three separate hospitals, specializing in serving children, women, and cancer patients, as well as a green energy center and the City’s first helipad. With a scheduled construction completion date of August 2014, UCSF’s sophisticated, benchmark new facility will usher San Francisco into a new era of health care.

UCSF officials are confident that UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay will open its doors to women, children and cancer patients by late 2014.

During a town hall meeting on Dec. 4, UCSF Medical Center Chief Executive Officer Mark Laret says that the team is making “remarkable progress” toward realizing the plan to open the new medical complex in four years.

“I am confident that we will start construction on this project in a year,” Laret said. “We will not only raise the $600 million, but we will create a group of donors who will support UCSF for decades to come.”

Sam Hawgood, MBBS, dean of the UCSF School of Medicine and vice chancellor for medical affairs, also conveyed confidence: “This project will get done and it will get done on time,” he said.

A video of the town hall meeting is posted online near the bottom of the UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay website. www.missionbayhospitals.ucsf.edu.

So far, UCSF has raised $225 million – the most money ever raised by the medical center in its first-ever capital campaign. The goal is to raise $600 million in private donations as part of the financing plan to build the $1.6 billion medical center at Mission Bay. The medical center also will use hospital reserves, external financing and other funding sources to finance the project.

“I am very confident that we will achieve this,” Laret said of the financing plan.

For her part, UCSF Chancellor Sue Desmond-Hellmann, MD, MPH, has said UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay is her top fund raising priority. On her first day as chancellor on Aug. 3, Desmond-Hellmann tapped Carol Moss, a seasoned development expert, to serve as vice chancellor of University Development and Alumni Relations at UCSF.

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