What’s next for the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus?

What’s next for the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus?

By | The Buffalo News | Published | Updated

The newly opened $270 million John R. Oishei Children’s Hospital was a page turner in the latest chapter of the burgeoning downtown Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.

So was the December opening of the University at Buffalo’s $375 million new home for its Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

The completion of the new projects mark a turning point for the 120-acre campus at the epicenter of Buffalo’s renaissance.

In 2002, the campus was in its infancy with just three companies. Now boasting 4.5 million square feet of development and $1.4 billion in investments, the campus has moved beyond just medical institutions. It has taken shape with a diverse mix of health care, life science and technology companies, becoming fertile ground for entrepreneurs and their startups.

There is still more to come.

Campus planners are aiming for BNMC to rival medical campuses in places like Cleveland and Pittsburgh. Among the next steps are strengthening ties with higher education and the private sectors.

“We are so well positioned with all the institutions and assets that are here and now want to embrace the excellent universities and colleges,” said Matthew K. Enstice, CEO and president of the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus Inc. “We plan to build out” – meaning renovate – “more space for them to have a location so they can interact and be a part of the entrepreneurial ecosystem that we have here.”

A big part of that vision is twp-contenting into local small and large companies, especially mature ones, and including them in the campus’ vision for its innovation district. “The world is changing so quickly in technology, that we’re putting a structure in place to help multiple, different companies innovate,” Enstice said.

Here’s what’s coming next on the Medical Campus:

• Design work is expected to start for renovation of existing buildings on the former Osmose Holdings site. In 2016, BNMC bought the 4.4-acre parcel, which is located at the northern edge of campus at Ellicott and Best streets and has parking for 200. It is expected to be a magnet for mature private-sector companies, along with universities and colleges, but will not be a second incubator, BNMC officials say.

• Ellicott Development Co. has a $4 million adaptive reuse development project underway at Our Lady of Lourdes Church, just north of the campus at Main and Best streets. To the south, Ellicott is planning a six-story retail and office building at 1091 Main St.

• Along the western edge of the campus, design work will begin for a redo of a critical stretch of Main Street from Goodell toward Canisius College. Meanwhile, a $7.5 million overhaul of Allen Street, including redesigned sidewalks and widened sections of the street, is expected to begin. Work will be done in phases, stretching from the eastern end of Allen toward Wadsworth.

• Workers will put the finishing touches on the exterior of UB’s Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, which opened to students earlier this month at 955 Main St. Final terra cotta panels are being installed on the Washington Street side of the building by spring. Most of the university’s labs are being moved in from mid-January through mid-March. With the medical school fully operational, 2,000 faculty, staff and students will be there daily.

• The Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority’s newly renovated Allen Medical Campus Station has been integrated into the medical school. The station features “Gut Flora,” a colorful public art sculpture by Shasti O’Leary Soudant, and a newsstand opens this month. A one-block tunnel that serves as a pedestrian passageway to Washington Street will open beneath the medical school.

• The campus’ ninth pedestrian skybridge will be designed and constructed later in the year. It will span High Street, linking the Conventus medical office building to the UB Medical School. The new $1.5 million connector comes after three other skybridges just opened in November: one from Conventus to Oishei Children’s Hospital, another from Children’s Hospital to Buffalo General Medical Center/Gates Vascular Institute, and a third leading out the back of Children’s Hospital to a new parking ramp at 854 Ellicott St.

• By late May, the $40 million, 1,825-space parking ramp behind Oishei Children’s Hospital at 854 Ellicott will be completed. The top half of the eight-story ramp has been under construction since late 2017. The bottom half of the eight-story ramp opened Nov. 10 with Oishei Children’s Hospital.

• The 128,000-square-foot Thomas R. Beecher Innovation Center at 640 Ellicott St. will be completely full by the end of March.

Biz Talk: Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus CEO talks about future growth

Biz Talk: Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus CEO talks about future growth

By | The Buffalo News | Published

After Amherst native Matthew K. Enstice wrwp-contented up stints in the entertainment industry that took him to Broadway Pictures in Los Angeles and “Saturday Night Live” in New York City, his career dramatically swerved back to Buffalo.

He landed at the helm of the nonprofit organization overseeing the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. Now, 17 years later, Enstice finds himself at the pulse of the expanding campus footprint, as he guides a shifting momentum in the campus’ growth.

With a collective projected workforce of 16,000 this year, the Medical Campus continues to make its mark – from hospitals to clinical and research facilities.

“We deliver health care here, and we’re going to do high-end health care here, but it’s changing,” said Enstice, president and chief executive officer of BNMC Inc. “Health care, as you know it, is a very, very different place. As that changes and evolves, you’re going to see opportunities in our community to utilize technology to develop companies for the future.”

The Medical Campus is already home to startup companies, entrepreneurs building businesses and high-tech companies. The momentum shows no signs of tapering off.

The future vision for the campus reflects a dedicated shift toward making room for local companies as they cut their teeth on new initiatives. The Medical Campus also looks to expand its innovation district to a 4.4-acre site on the northern edge of campus that once was the home of Osmose Holdings.

A visionary with high energy, Enstice is related to the prominent Jacobs family. His late father-in-law, Dr. Lawrence D. Jacobs, was a neurologist and world-renowned researcher specializing in the treatment of multiple sclerosis.

Often wearing a blue or white button-down shirt and khakis, he is known for his casual attire and carefree manner. He rarely breaks out a tie or suit.

Enstice recently met with The Buffalo News inside the campus Innovation Center to talk about the campus’ growth and future.

Q: What do monumental projects such as Children’s Hospital and the UB medical school say about the future of the campus?

A: People talked in years past that Children’s wasn’t moving over and there was a lot of controversy. But I think it showed how the community coming together can do great things, and that’s what Children’s is a true sign of.

Right now, the (medical school) has a major presence in the city. That, to me, is a game changer that I don’t think we can define right now.

I was sitting there at the opening, looking right out the window down Allen Street, and it was just amazing to envision what is Allen going to be like. What was so wild to see, was that I used to never see people walking there and there must have been 20 or 30 people coming out of that subway. It’s just the fact that we have so much traffic starting to develop down here. And that’s a real positive.

It’s just the beginning of more opportunities for our community to leverage these great assets and great organizations being here on the campus.

Q: How does Buffalo’s regional health care hub fit within the national mix?

A: I think that we’re one of the leading innovation districts. I just don’t think about it as health. If you look back to what Jerry Jacobs commissioned for looking at the future of medicine, it’s changing dramatically. And I believe we’re very well positioned because of our computer science school, our school of engineering and our ability to be leaders in the technology field. That’s what I think of.

So, we’ve been on the map. Having Children’s and the medical school down here, puts it on the map even more.

What we need to figure out how to do, and what we really want to do, in our next phases of development is to integrate the school of engineering and the schools of business.

How does Canisius College play a role here? How does Niagara University play a role here? How does Buffalo State College play a role here? We are so well positioned with all the institutions and assets that are here. So we plan to build out more space for them to have a location so they can interact and be a part of the entrepreneurial ecosystem that we have here.

Q: What kind of involvement?

A: Let’s look at the future of medicine and all the work that we’re doing in energy, all the work that we’re doing in transportation. What’s the major driver behind those industries as they’re changing? It’s technology. We’re well positioned in building our community out to have a technology foundation that can enable health care, energy, transportation.

I’m talking this campus. We have all the resources. I don’t think we’ll build a building for a college. We want to build an environment where local businesses, big companies, are going to have a presence here.

Our plan is to build out space to embrace the local economy. I think, for too long, a lot of local businesses have not been engaged, because there hasn’t been a vehicle.

I believe that if you look across as to what’s going to help strengthen local companies, they have to be a part of what we’re doing. I think we can all help one another. That is what this is all about. How do we build a platform and a foundation in technology for everybody? Tech is not the next chapter. It’s the current chapter. It’s really what is going to be our great opportunity for the future.

We’ll use the footprint of the existing (Osmose) space that we have. As of right now, we are not planning to build a new building in the near future. We are planning to renovate the existing space. I think, over time, various companies will start to come in, but within the year is our goal is to start to see this development really start to take off.

Q: What would you say to naysayers who didn’t think this vision for the campus would ever materialize in the fashion that it has so far?

A: If you stay together and you’re straightforward and honest with one another, great things can hwp-contenten. That is at the core of what builds all the great stuff that’s down here on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus … If you look at the 4.5 million square feet of development, the $1.4 billion worth of investment, that was because people worked, planned, developed together.

Q: What is the greatest challenge facing the campus?

A: I think the greatest challenge is that people continue to work together and support one another … I think the biggest challenge you have is that sometimes people forget what got you here.

Q: Parking is a constant complaint or concern, and there’s a huge push to get people to use public transit more.

A: We have off-campus shuttles running. We have public transportation being utilized and programs in place. And it’s starting to work. People are actually trying it and it’s working. While it’s not perfect, it is an option. And so to me, we will always have a parking spot here for every patient and visitor that comes down here.

What we would hope to see is that more people live in and around the campus, in and around the subway station.

The mayor continues to talk about reinvesting in Main Street with infrastructure. He’s committed $10 million so far, going toward Canisius. We want to see the mayor continue on that and go all the way and connect us to Canisius College. … I believe if you continue to do that, you’ll see more residential units pop up on Main Street. You’ll see more people using the transit. That’s what we want to see.

Q: There are signs of spinoff development in Allentown. But for the Fruit Belt neighborhood, there always seems to be an undercurrent of concern, gentrification, trying to preserve the Michigan Avenue corridor, and a push for more parking. What do you foresee for the Fruit Belt?

A: For the Fruit Belt, I hope that there’s continued investment there in the infrastructure. The mayor has done a great job at fixing the streets, the sidewalks, the trees and the lights. I hope they continue to do that because I want to see more people invest in that neighborhood. … We believe that will be a positive if the community is part of the solution there.

I’m really intrigued by what’s going on in Masten, Fruit Belt and Allentown – to me, they’re very similar in the sense that they’ve always been engaged in a part of the process with what’s going on with the campus. Everybody’s always talked about it. Everybody’s had a light on it.

What I’m interested in is what is going on to the north. We believe there’s going to need to be more of an engagement there. I think it’s a community that people maybe have not paid as much attention to. But they’re on the border of all this stuff that’s going on here. So, it’s probably already hwp-contentening and we don’t know it.

New Year, New Look!

There’s a new gateway to the BNMC, for both pedestrians wp-contentroaching from the Allentown neighborhood, as well as transit riders disembarking at the Allen-Medical Campus station. UB’s new building, the state-of-the-art Jacobs School of Medicine, provides employees, students, and neighbors a new experience as they enter the Medical Campus. Transit riders come up the escalator into a gleaming new station, complete with bright public art and digital wayfinding. The Medical School, Buffalo’s signature transit-oriented development, allows passage through to the Medical School today, and will soon help connect employees and patients to many of the buildings across the BNMC.  In addition, the Washington Street side of the transit station has reopened, providing easy access into the heart of the BNMC.
Learn more about our healthier, sustainable and more affordable transportation options at GoBNMC.org.

 

ACV Auctions’ new 10,000-square-foot office can accommodate up to 130 employees

ACV Auctions’ new 10,000-square-foot office can accommodate up to 130 employees 

By  –  Reporter, Buffalo Business First

It’s been clear for awhile that ACV Auctions needed an office.

Turns out it didn’t need to leave the building.

The fast-moving technology startup, which offers a software platform for wholesale used car auctions, signed a lease Monday for a 10,000-square-foot office in the Thomas R. Beecher Jr. Innovation Center. The space will be renovated by building owner Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus Inc. and the company expects to move in by spring.

Company CEO George Chamoun said the space will be a large open floor plan with conference rooms and a modern tech vibe – including no executive offices. Chamoun and other managers will sit among the rest of the company’s employees.

The office is expected to accommodate up to 130 employees, which means it’s likely to be full soon. Chamoun said ACV will keep its various smaller offices around the building for personnel overflow.

Overall, ACV Auctions currently has 160 full-time employees.

That’s a far cry from the company’s formation in 2014, when Joe Neiman, Dan Magnuszewski and Jack Greco announced they had co-founded the company. Since that time, the company has raised about $21 million in private capital in three separate fundraising rounds. It also won the $1 million grand prize in the 43North business competition in 2015.

Since it was founded, ACV’s home base has been the Z80 Labs technology incubator, which is on the Innovation Center’s ground floor. Its team now takes up a sizable chunk of that real estate, while engineers, sales teams and others have separate offices in smaller rooms around the building.

Chamoun said the move gives ACV its own branded space without the tremendous logistical hurdles of an extensive real estate search. Various local technology firms have taken years to find the right mix of price and parking combined with a modern technology vibe in downtown Buffalo.

The third floor office also has large windows looking out to the burgeoning medical campus, with views of new buildings like the University at Buffalo’s Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and Kaleida Health’s new John R. Oishei Children’s Hospital.

“The landlords here have been great to us, and this allows us to continue doing our job right now,” Chamoun said. “It’s a great location and allows us to put around own brand around it.”

According to Chamoun, ACV’s job is to continue establishing its presence in new territories throughout the United States. ACV hires employees in each of its territories – including 33 territory managers – and then seeks to build a market of wholesale dealers and buyers, who can do real-time auctions on an wp-content instead of bringing vehicles to a physical auction.

The company has now extended south to Florida and has begun fielding requests from new territories. It is in the preliminary stages of considering a large new injection of funding in 2018 to accelerate growth.

Chamoun said ACV’s revenue is up 600 percent from 2016 and the company is hitting its financial milestones.

The company is also developing new products toward the goal of being a comprehensive solution in the wholesale automotive world.

“Buying and selling wholesale is all about trust,” Chamoun said. “We are building a product portfolio that’s built around trust for both buyers and sellers.”

Oishei Children’s Hospital: As moving day nears, a range of emotions sets in

Oishei Children’s Hospital: As moving day nears, a range of emotions sets in

By  –  Reporter, Buffalo Business First

With less than two days to go until the massive move of patients and equipment begins from Women & Children’s Hospital of Buffalo to the John R. Oishei Children’s Hospital, leaders say they’re feeling great, if a bit weary.

Emotions at the hospital have ranged from excitement and optimism to sadness as employees and patient families who have worked at the old hospital prepare for its shutdown after decades of memories.

“I’ve been talking with people, seeing how they’re doing and if they’re ready,” said Jody Lomeo, Kaleida Health CEO, who has been rounding at the old site with staff and workers over the past few weeks. “(Monday) was the first time I sensed the emotion of it all, I think because it’s the last week on that campus and the reality of the move is setting in.”

With 185 beds, the $270 million hospital is one of just 43 stand-alone children’s hospitals in the nation and the only one in New York. It will be connected to Buffalo General Medical Center on one side, and to the Conventus medical office building on the other, with ongoing connections to the University at Buffalo’s Jacobs School of Medicine & Biomedical Sciences.

With the five-year development coming to a close, anticipation for the opening is palpable, Lomeo said.

“The reality of the new building, the beauty and allure of the new building, is everywhere. Everyone loves the new building, and just what it represents, but I think the really interesting thing is the walk down memory lane that they’re all doing — and rightfully so,” he said. “That walk takes them to their personal side and who they’ve worked with, who they’ve healed every day. They’ve maybe parked in the same spot, walked the same route, ate in the same spot. And it’s where they’ve had holidays with their co-workers versus with their families at home because that’s just the reality of the world we live in.”

Beginning at 7:01 a.m. on Friday, the carefully rehearsed move will begin, with 150-180 patients expected to be transferred individually by ambulance from the old site on Bryant Street to the new hospital on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. A fleet of 15 ambulances from American Medical Response(AMR) will circle between the two sites over a period that’s expected to last nearly 24 hours.

An army of 1,000 volunteers will play a role in the move throughout the day, including serving as assigned ambassadors with patients, directing traffic in the parking ramp and serving water and food to all involved during move day.

The old hospital will stop accepting patients Friday morning, then will shut down department by department, floor by floor. Simultaneously, patients will begin to be accepted at the new hospital through the emergency room. Similarly, though the day will begin with double staffing, the employees will shift from one hospital to the next as patients are moved over.

“I’ve been using the example of a teeter-totter,” Lomeo said. “At the Bryant Street campus, we will have a full campus at 7 a.m., which will start to go down, and Oishei will continue to go up. Sometime after midnight, we expect we’ll shut the lights off on Bryant Street and say goodbye, and everyone will be in full go-mode at Oishei.”

THE ROUTE

CHILDREN’S MOVE

MAP COURTESY: GOOGLE/KALEIDA HEALTH

Patient Route WCHOB -> OCH

Bryant St, Right on Delaware Ave, Left on North St, Right on Ellicott St.

Ambulance OCH -> WCHOB

Ellicott St, Left on Ellicott St, Left on North St, Right on Delaware Ave, Left on Bryant St.

Intended to cross with Patient Transport in order to provide support if needed

Equipment WCHOB -> OCH

Bryant St, Right on Oakland Pl, Left on Summer St, Right on Ellicott St.

Truck Return OCH -> WCHOB

Ellicott St, Left on Goodrich St, Right on Main St, Left on Bryant St.

Families/Shuttle WCHOB -> OCH

Hodge St, Right on Elmwood Ave, Right on W Utica St, Right on Michigan Ave, Right on North St , Left on Ellicott St.

 Part of Normal Ambulance Route

UB med school begins move to Medical Campus

UB med school begins move to Medical Campus

By | Published | Updated

The University at Buffalo medical school is starting to move into its new digs on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.

Eight moving trucks recently began to haul boxes of files, equipment and other materials from more than 50 offices on UB’s South Campus to the new Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at Main and Allen streets, where construction is 99 percent complete.

The $375 million university medical school is expected to be a major advance for UB’s expanding medical program when classes begin there in January.

The eight-story, 628,000-square-feet building – which incorporates a Metro Rail station – will replace medical school classrooms and laboratories on UB’s South Campus, where the school has been based since 1953. It includes an advanced surgical simulation center for students to hone their operating skills in a robotic surgery site. It also will have clinical training areas for general patient care that are designed to look like hospital rooms, an obstetric delivery room, an emergency trauma center and other patient care facilities.

The building, which was designed by architects at HOK, is wrwp-contented in nearly 28,000 locally made terra cotta panels.

The building’s downtown location puts it in close proximity to its clinical and research partners, including Buffalo General Medical Center, John R. Oishei Children’s Hospital, Gates Vascular Institute and Roswell Park Cancer Institute.

A sign was installed on the new home of the UB’s Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in August. (Derek Gee/ News file photo)

Most of the materials being moved now are administrative and related to senior associate deans, admissions and graduate medical education, said UB spokeswoman Ellen Goldbaum.

The first major movement of medical school staff and supplies started about a week before the planned opening on Friday of the John R. Oishei Children’s Hospital, a short distance away.

UB administrative staff, including Dr. Michael E. Cain, dean and vice president for health sciences, are part of the first phase of the move.

The New York State University Construction Fund granted a temporary certificate of occupancy in early October, and staff and administrators are expected to begin working inside the new medical school soon.

The building is mostly now complete, though some final punch list items are still being done, Goldbaum said.

Final work includes data wiring and furniture coordination and installation.

“As the job goes toward the end, there are finishing stages and things change, technology evolves,” said William J. Mahoney, vice president of LPCiminelli, general contractor of the project.

The bulk of what’s being moved now includes files, office equipment and computers, phones and some pieces of furniture, but many offices are getting new furniture. Lab equipment will be moved later this fall, Goldbaum said.

On the exterior, workers are installing the last of terra cotta panels on the building’s east wing and finishing metal panels along a canopy section that extends over the sidewalks around the perimeter of the medical school.

Work on a one-block tunnel through the medical school that will extend pedestrian traffic from Allen Street to Washington Street is wrwp-contenting up, as well. “We’re finishing all the metal panels on the roof of the walkway,” Mahoney said. He expects that work to wind down by late November. “It’s really coming along nice.”

Meanwhile, makeshift pedestrian crossings and temporary dividing posts along Main Street used to shift traffic lanes during the school’s construction were fully removed last weekend.

Mwp-contenting the path of Children’s Hospital big move

Mwp-contenting the path of Children’s Hospital big move

Fewer than 100 days remain until Kaleida Health begins a strategic 24-hour move of patients, equipment and families into the John R. Oishei Children’s Hospital. That will officially shut down operations at Women & Children’s Hospital of Buffalo.

Though the journey is just 1.2 miles, planners have worked for 18 months to plan the move down to the last detail. In all, more than 400 individuals participated in the planning process via 28 activation teams, 17 task forces and four steering committees.

The ultimate goal is to safely move every patient, including babies just a few hours old.

The day of the move, the plan calls for staff and physicians to operate two fully functioning hospitals in tandem while systematically transferring patients one at a time via ambulance through city streets.

Among those involved in the move will be hundreds of volunteers, as well as three main players, each of whom gave Business First some behind-the-scenes knowledge of what it will take to move the hospital.

The administrator

Children’s Hospital President Allegra Jaros has been involved since the start five years ago, overseeing construction for the last three years on Oishei Children’s Hospital, a $270 million, 12-story hospital with 183 beds. Also involved are physicians, nurses, staff, volunteers, patient families and community members who are determined to make sure nothing is overlooked.

Jaros will manage staffing needs for the big day: Children’s professional staff, physicians and employees at all levels as well as others throughout the Kaleida Health system. That includes people who participated in moves from Millard Fillmore Gates Circle Hospital to Buffalo General Medical Center, and from Deaconess Center to HighPointe on Michigan.

Jaros also recruited clinical team members who helped with moves of other children’s hospitals and adult hospitals.

“We brought them in at a time when we utilized their knowledge base along with a consulting company to ensure that 18 months ago, we were thinking ahead of time of all the expenses and needs to safely move our patients,” she said.

In all, moving Children’s is expected to cost upward of $7.5 million, with more than half the costs tied to labor and training ahead of time and the day of the move. Jaros will play a supporting role and will travel between command centers at each site, assess any barriers that might arise and then help team leaders figure out what to do.

“We’re planning our drills with oddities, like what if this type of thing hwp-contentens or this person or patient arrives at the door,” she said. “I haven’t had that crazy dream yet. We have such a great, talented team of care providers, so as long as we stay focused on the patients, we will knock it out of the park.”

The planner

Cassandra Church is one of the people Jaros is counting on.

Church is clinical project manager and president of Clinical Project Consulting LLC, a company she started last year to help move hospitals. A neonatal intensive care nurse, she brings experience from helping to move two Washington, D.C.-area hospitals over the past decade: Children’s National Medical Center and Inova Fairfax Hospital’s children’s division.

Church was a NICU nurse when Children’s National moved that unit from an open-bay design to a private-room model. At Inova Fairfax, she was senior director for nursing and oversaw all pediatric services when the entire 226-bed children’s hospital moved to a new building on the campus.

The Buffalo move is the first time she will rely on ambulances versus walking patients in hospital beds through tunnels and internal passageways. Though the move via ambulance might sound scary or risky to outsiders, Church said Children’s Hospital moves hundreds of patients every year to and from hospitals both in and out of town including Pittsburgh, Cleveland and New York City.

“We move them in, we push them out and from a neonatal perspective, we will often do back transfers once infants are stabilized and a little closer to going home,” she said.

She has run a series of mock moves involving representatives of every unit in the hospital.

One recent event used colored gift bags to represent patients, patterned balloons as their mode of transport (isolette incubator, crib, etc.), Duplo bricks for medicine, candy bars to represent nutritional requirements and rubber gloves for infectious disease/isolation garb.

As the prep teams “left” the old hospital, they had to remember to scan the patient’s bar-coded bracelet before handing off the bag/patient to a paramedic to be transported, then checked in at the new hospital.

The exercise led to suggestions for items that might make the process easier. For example, instead of transporting the most serious cases all at once, the schedule calls for starting with patients who aren’t as sick, then moving one who is a bit sicker, then the most serious before starting over again. That will result in what Church calls an “acuity bell curve” so caregivers aren’t overloaded.

The mock move also generated some serious questions: What hwp-contentens if a patient codes on that 1.2-mile trip? Should the ambulance turn back?

A paramedic in the room shouted out, “No. You go faster.”

“You never turn back,” Church said. “Once you’re going forward, it’s all forward momentum. You never turn back.”

After participating in two other hospital moves, move coordinator Cassandra Church brought some do’s and don’ts with her:

Focus on hands-on training. At Children’s National, she said staff were prepared only with classroom training and a tour of the new facility. The move at Inova Fairfax involved more hands-on training with practice for timed patient moves. That’s the wp-contentroach Church implemented here.

“When you look at the adult learner, we learn by doing; we don’t learn by looking at a PowerPoint. So we made all our training scenario-based,” she said.

Know your technology. The monitors to be used at Oishei Children’s might be the same as the ones she used at other hospitals. Still, it’s important to ask questions and to practice when integrating technology. Church found out the hard way that flashing colored alarm lights outside patient rooms at Inova Fairfax also had speakers, which led to a very noisy unit for a few hours.

“Give yourself time to test,” she said. “Here, we were ahead of the game in the install. We already have monitors in, computers in and the nurse call system. So we’ve given ourselves more time to test and make sure there aren’t any surprises.”

Don’t rush things. Church said that during the mock moves and other training, no one should try to get ahead of themselves. Each part of the move for each patient is timed for a reason. It’s OK to fall behind a bit. Delays are expected since no one can predict how stable each patient will be at their assigned move time. But getting ahead of schedule will only cause problems for other parts of the move.

 – Tracey Drury

The (people) mover

Leading the ambulance crew is Scott Karaszewski, a 20-year paramedic and chief EMS officer at American Medical Response, the region’s largest ground provider of emergency services. He and his colleagues provided transport during the Millard Gates and Deaconess moves and have other experience moving patients between hospitals.

For move day, the company will schedule at least 30 prople to staff 15 ambulances, including two new specialized ambulances that provide pediatric transport and neonatal care.

Though the move will be more fast-paced and continuous than a typical shift, AMR is accustomed to moving critical-care patients. Having nurses and other pediatric staff of Children’s Hospital along for the ride will absolutely ease the process.

Karaszewski said participating in the pre-planning with Church and others was the best preparation.

“We have a good partnership there and it’s nice that we can all bounce ideas off each other,” he said. “Come November, it’s going to be like a Swiss watch.”

Practice for the move goes to the next level at the end of this month with ambulances taking the route. Next will be a mock move in September with volunteers standing in as patients.

Like Church, Karaszewski won’t admit to any fears or reservations about the move.

“We have planned for every possible scenario, so we are as ready as we can be,” he said. “In EMS and medicine, we can adapt and overcome as long as nothing’s wrong with the new building, but we’ll know that well in advance. Otherwise, we’re well-prepared for anything that could head our way except a Mother Nature event, and even then we could work around that.”

Who are the volunteers?

More than 400 individuals have stepped forward to participate in the process, with teams of students from St. Joseph’s Collegiate Institute and Buffalo Seminary going through a pre-check of every single room in the new hospital to make sure that outlets work and nothing is missing.

On moving day, individuals who are regular volunteers at the existing hospital will become ambassadors, assigned to families and responsible for keeping them up to speed on the time and logistics surrounding their child’s move from one hospital to the other. They’ll also greet the family at the new site and escort them from the parking ramp.

Dozens of other volunteers will serve food and beverages for patient families, physicians and staff all day.

What about security?

Just a few of the new hospital’s entrances will be open on day one, and everything will have controlled entry with badge swipes. Extra security will be posted at each level of the new hospital to limit access to patient families.

Employees will be encouraged to bring the minimum items they’ll need for the day, carrying just their car keys, phone and wallet versus purses and bags. And families whose children are long-term patients will be encouraged to take toys and personal items home in the days leading up to the move, then bring them back to the new hospital once the patient is settled.

A 1.2-MILE ROUTE

HOW MUCH TO MOVE A HOSPITAL?

Hospital planners say the typical cost to move a hospital is 2 percent to 3 percent of overall project costs, but how do those costs break down? Not surprisingly, the biggest costs are labor expenses before the move and the day of the move.

 

Editorial: UBMD is another boost for Medical Campus

Editorial: UBMD is another boost for Medical Campus

By The Buffalo News

In yet another unmistakable sign that the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus is coming into its own, UBMD Physicians’ Group is beginning to move into the Conventus building.

The goal of having physicians, researchers and medical students all working together is taking shape. The result should further solidify the Medical Campus as an integral part of the area’s economic engine and help stretch its reputation beyond local borders. More immediate is the opportunity for medical professionals to interact.

As reported in The News, UBMD, which formed in 2005 as the umbrella organization for 18 separate medical specialty practices, has begun centralizing in one location more than 100 of its doctors. In all, the group has more than 500 doctors affiliated with the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. The group includes an additional 1,200 health professionals and staff.

The seven-story medical building at 1001 Main St. is the bridge between Medical Campus institutions. As News medical reporter Henry L. Davis wrote, it has direct connections to the University at Buffalo’s new Jacobs School and to the John R. Oishei Children’s Hospital. Both are in the final stages of construction.

The pediatric hospital is connected to Buffalo General Medical Center and Gates Vascular Institute. UBMD’s own move to the Medical Campus is a welcome change for doctors who have been working in separate locations, communicating but not meeting.

There is a benefit when medical professionals have the opportunity to share ideas face to face on a regular basis. Such human connections can crystallize ideas, something that might not hwp-contenten over a telephone line, email or Skype. It is the case for many industries: consulting with colleagues helps improve ideas; in this case, ideas for better patient care.

As Dr. Kevin J. Gibbons, executive director of UBMD and a neurosurgeon with UB Neurosurgery, said: “There are doctors I have had working relationships with for years but rarely or never met. Now, we’ll be meeting.”

Twelve of its medical practices crossing a spectrum of specialties have moved or will be moving into Conventus within the next two months: dermatology, family medicine, internal medicine, neurology, neurosurgery, obstetrics-gynecology, orthopedics/sports medicine, pathology, pediatrics, psychiatry, surgery and urology.

Children’s Hospital and the Jacobs School are expected to complete transitioning to the campus this fall. With the moves, 15,000 people are expected to work on the campus.
The Medical Campus has grown from a concept to a reality reaching the stage where medical students and professionals are scouting their new terrain.

Synergy is a buzz word that can be overused. But that synergy is an important reason for the Medical Campus. The decision by UBMD to move to Conventus is a gain for an important element of the new Buffalo.

Medical Campus grows to more than 150 companies

Medical Campus grows to more than 150 companies

By

The Buffalo News

The number of companies on the 120-acre Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus has grown to more than 150, according to the nonprofit organization that oversees the campus.

In 2002, when the campus was in its infancy, there were three companies.

Companies counted by the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus Inc. include those located in its entrepreneurial hub; University at Buffalo’s Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences; UB Gateway; Hauptman-Woodward Research Institute; Conventus; 73 High St. and 847 Main St. It also includes services providers and tenants that have offices within one of the buildings on campus but may be headquartered elsewhere.

The campus is a diverse mix of companies and not solely focused on health care and life sciences. Social impact and technological-based companies also are on the uptick, along with a major push of those interested in starting or growing a business.

[PHOTO GALLERY: UB’s downtown medical school nears completion]

The number of people working on the Medical Campus will expand this fall when UB’s Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences opens to faculty and then in January to students. Women & Children’s Hospital of Buffalo operations will move to the new John R. Oishei Children’s Hospital in November.

The state recently awarded $625,000 to the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus to expand its business development program. In the past year, there has been $750 million of investment and 700 construction workers on the campus, according to Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus Inc.

Planning for Growth

Planning for Growth

With over $750 million of investment, three cranes in the air and 700 construction workers on the Medical Campus this past year, our growth is undeniable as we continue to build the New Buffalo! We’re celebrating these developments to our great city and are looking forward to future advancements in the years ahead.

We’ve been planning and coordinating with our member institutions for many years to accommodate the influx of patients, visitors, employees and students on our transportation system and infrastructure. As the Campus grows, our Transportation Management Association (TMA), a collaboration of the BNMC, our member institutions, and regional transportation-related entities, continually monitors, plans for, and manages parking and transportation options.

We adhere to smart growth principles as we seek to build a dense, walkable urban environment that is attractive to local employers and companies outside the region looking for a wonderful place to relocate and grow. We work with a number of stakeholders to develop better options for the people who work on this Campus, as well as patients, students, and visitors, and our overall community and region.

Here’s a brief overview of our recent transportation planning efforts:

  • We continue to enhance options for people traveling to the Medical Campus, through the NFTA Metro rail and bus, carpooling, ride-matching, pedestrian & bicycle infrastructure and communicate these options as a part of GoBNMC, our campus-wide initiative to create a more sustainable and active transportation system for employees.
  • We are increasing our on-Campus parking supply with a new garage located at 854 Ellicott St., which will double the number of parking spaces at that location and provide a connector bridge to Children’s Hospital. We are also adding nearby surface lots to our system.
  • Through GO Buffalo Niagara, a region-wide community outreach program, we continue to identify and address transportation and mobility issues in surrounding neighborhoods and to share job and transportation information with residents.
  • We’re working together with the city and state to implement multi-modal streetscape enhancements that improve Campus access, promote health and safety, and support our overall placemaking efforts.

Planning for parking and transportation has been a critical component of our work for our 15 year history. Learn more about transportation and parking plans for the Medical Campus on our website.

Buffalo Building a Biomedical Powerhouse

Buffalo Building a Biomedical Powerhouse

Buffalo Business First

Observers say there are several reasons why a cluster of ambitious biomedical companies emerged on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.

It partly has to do with investments in local facilities such as the University at Buffalo’s Center for Computational Research, the local center for big data projects.

It also is owed to general technological advances, allowing researchers to turn their science into more specific medical testing and more effective cures.

And it has to do with an evolving economy of entrepreneurship in Buffalo, which is finally turning research hotbeds such as UB, Roswell Park Cancer Institute and Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute into engines of economic growth.

“It’s the computing power along with the science and the confluence of all those facilities that are allowing this to occur,” said Kim Grant, a UB business development executive who works with emerging companies.

Those who are paying attention, such as Grant, recognize an obvious trend in biomedical entrepreneurship in Buffalo. There are more companies being founded, gaining funding and building out real businesses rather than just research projects.

One of the breakouts is Athenex, which was established out of UB in 2002 but more recently raised more than $200 million and is leveraging significant government subsidies to build factories in China and Western New York. Company officials are aggressively pursuing an international strategy to design and manufacture cancer therapies.

But it’s not just about one company. Buffalo now hosts dozens of high-tech companies attacking many sides of the medical industry. Companies that are pursuing cancer therapies which direct chemicals directly to tumors won both the UB Henry A. Panasci Jr. Technology Entrepreneurship Competition (POP Biotechnologies) and the 43North competition (Oncolinx).

They join the list of growing personalized cancer companies that includes Roswell spin-offs OmniSeq, Photolitec and MimiVax; and For-Robin, out of UB.

Meanwhile, a Buffalo Billion program directed multimillion-dollar grants to two companies in 2016, Garwood Medical Devices and Circuit Clinical. Both are located downtown.

Garwood raised $3.6 million in venture capital in 2016 while Circuit Clinical raised more than $1 million.

Then there are the companies tackling medical testing, such as Empire Genomics, AccuTheranostics and Disease Diagnostic Group.

And that’s just an unscientific sampling of the young companies sprinkled throughout facilities on the medical campus or based near UB’s Amherst footprint, some of which were founded here and others that were recruited.

So when Grant goes to trade shows in Boston or New York City, she doesn’t hear snow jokes anymore, she gets genuine interest.

Local experts are starting to make bold comparisons about historical precedents for the Buffalo medical ecosystem. Dr. Steven Schwaitzberg, an entrepreneur who was a professor at Harvard University before he was recruited to become surgery chair at UB’s Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, recently said Buffalo looks like Boston in the late 1980s just before it became an international biomedical powerhouse.

And Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute CEO Edward Snell said Buffalo is starting to resemble the Stanford area in California, where a long history of top-notch research blossomed dramatically into a worldwide medical and tech hotbed.

“You’re seeing the same thing in Buffalo, a mixture of industry, academia and clinical experts all in the same area,” Snell said. “We’re seeing incremental growth but we’re nowhere near saturation point yet.”

He said the final key is pulling in more private investment. There are a handful of investment groups that actively consider seed funding for medical companies in Buffalo. But these types of companies often require major capital infusions to catalyze their growth.

Snell said he’s optimistic.

“I see a steady increase in venture capital and federal research funding,” he said. “And I think you’re going to see quite a few stories about that in the not-too-distant future.”

BNMC Sees Explosive Growth

In recent years – the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus has become “the place to be” for entrepreneurs and new companies.

In just three years, the number of businesses on the Medical Campus increased 300%.

“Going in to 2013 we had about 40 companies that were located here in the Innovation Center. And at the close of 2016 we’re supporting a little over 120 companies across the Medical Campus,” said Vic Nole, the BNMC’s Director of Business Development.

Nole says, they’re not all involved in healthcare or life sciences either. There’s a diverse mix of companies.

“We’ve got quite a bit of technology, we’ve got a little bit of manufacturing. We have some social impact entrepreneurs,” Nole said.

There’s even some retail and a few artists. Nole says the strategy is to have an open door and bring in anyone who has an interest in starting or growing a business. The state recently designated the BNMC’s Innovation Center as a certified business incubator.

“So in the Innovation Center we’ve really been successful in creating a self-contained little ecosystem. And then our intent is to get them scaling to a point where we can transplant them in to the community and they can continue to grow and create new jobs for Buffalo,” Nole said.

The state recently awarded the BNMC $625,000  to expand its business development program.

City Shapers: Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus

By Kelly Dudzik, WGRZ
BUFFALO, N.Y. — Each Monday, we are highlighting someone who is helping to build Buffalo and Western New York in our City Shapers segment.

This week, we are profiling Matt Enstice. Enstice leads a group that is leading Buffalo’s growth and innovation: The Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.

“You always know you can come back home to Buffalo. You know, that’s what my wife and I saw, and I think that’s what I see with most of the youth that’s out there. They know that they can come back here. What we’re trying to do is to create more of a special place for them to continuously come back to because at Buffalo’s roots, it has all the great pieces in place,” says Enstice.

Enstice is one of the people making sure all of those pieces work together to generate smart growth and innovative ideas as the President and CEO of the non-profit Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. Enstice grew up here, and a career in the entertainment industry took him across the country before he moved back.

“In Los Angeles, I was an intern at Broadway Pictures. And in New York, I worked for Saturday Night Live, and it was really on the production side, so a lot of the production was about, you know, bringing people together and moving a live show forward with a team of people, and that’s what this is here at the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus,” says Enstice.

Since 2002, Enstice and his team have led the effort to redevelop the Medical Campus.

“So there are a lot of moving parts,” said 2 On Your Side’s Kelly Dudzik.

“Lots of moving parts here, and that’s a really good thing. Over the years, for a while we weren’t moving, and now what you see here is you look out the windows and look around this campus, there’s a lot of things in motion,” says Enstice.

Part of his mission is to grow the Medical Campus and build on the success that’s already there.

“How does it make you feel to be a part of all of this and to be one of the driving forces with your team to make this hwp-contenten for Buffalo?” asked Dudzik.

“The real exciting thing to myself and to our team is that every day we come to work and we’re trying to figure out by what we’re doing, how is this going to take Buffalo to the next level?”

The Medical Campus is much more than the health care industry. When we visited, the DIG workspace was hosting a Wine Down Wednesday networking event. The Kevin Guest House extension, which will be connected by a walkway to Allen Street, is being transformed into this year’s Decorators’ Show House.

By the end of this year, around 17,000 employees or students will be working on the Medical Campus.

“Is it more competitive now? Do you have more people contacting you saying hey, I want to be a part of this? How has that changed?” asked Dudzik.

“Yeah, I what you’ve seen with our institutions and the various companies that have moved down here have created a buzz. And so you’re seeing a lot of different companies, whether it’s a local company or a company from out of town that wants to be down on this campus,” says Enstice.

Over the next decade, Enstice says more companies will put down roots here and he predicts more academic involvement from local colleges and universities.

“I think the beauty of it is that, together with the community, we’re imagining what could this still really become,” he says.

Enstice also does a weekly podcast called “Talking Cities” where he and his guests talk about creating innovative growth in cities around the world.

If you know someone who is doing something great for Buffalo and Western New York, send Kelly Dudzik email and they might be our next City Shaper.

Welcome New Children’s Hospital Employees!

Earlier this month, the first round of employees from Children’s Hospital Outpatient Center settled in their new offices on the third floor of the Conventus building at 1001 Main St. located on the northern end of Campus. We’re thrilled to share that both patients and staff had “a remarkable response to the new space and facility,” commenting on how inviting, safe and accessible it is.
The move will occur in several stages throughout 2017, with more clinics moving in April and then a final round of employees coming over in October. The opening of Children’s Hospital and the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences will lead to nearly 15,000 people working and learning on the Medical Campus within the next year.