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St. Mary's Medical Center
New address
But our heart is right where it's always been
Timeline
Design and construction master plan
Essentia Health’s commitment to transform our downtown medical campus represents the largest private investment in Duluth’s history. The Vision Northland building project demonstrates Essentia Health’s commitment to the health of its patients, the economic vitality of the community, and the work environment for its staff.
Vision Northland groundbreaking ceremony
On September 25, 2019, we held our Vision Northland groundbreaking ceremony, marking the beginning of construction of a four-year, $900 million investment that includes a replacement hospital bed tower, clinical space and surgical suites.
Foundations complete
Before and after perspective of the Vision Northland building project site at Essentia Health in Duluth, Minnesota.
Structure complete and topping out ceremony
Essentia Health marked the structural completion of construction and raised the final beam of Vision Northland during a topping out ceremony on November 9, 2021.
Interior construction tours
Learn more about the design of specialty care units at St. Mary’s Medical Center. These include birthing suites, midwifery suites, the emergency department, Children’s Hospital, heart and vascular unit, intensive care unit (ICU) and operating rooms.
Substantial completion of facility
98% of all major facility construction was completed.
Community Open House
The community was invited to tour Essentia Health-St. Mary's Medical Center on Friday, July 21. More than 3500 community members came to visit the hospital. They toured the amenities floor including the beautiful winter garden atrium, chapel and cafeteria, the Birthplace on the 8th floor, and an ICU unit on the 9th floor.
Opening of St. Mary’s Medical Center
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Private Rooms
Private rooms support patient healing, tranquility, and comfort. Rehabilitation cares and conversations with physicians can occur in the privacy of each patient room. A patient education and entertainment system is included in each private patient room. This provides a hotel-like experience with more than 100 new-release movies and TV shows, 50 channels of live television, the ability to stream concerts and worship services from our chapel, and options to broadcast from a smartphone. These systems will keep patients connected and entertained while in the hospital. They also will allow patients to order food, view members of their care team and request assistance.
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Healing Environment
Throughout the planning and design phases, we focused on patients and their families and instituted several healing features that will benefit the patients we are privileged to serve, as well as our care teams. All patient rooms will be on the outside wall of the hospital and will feature large windows, giving patients a front-row seat to views of Lake Superior or the beautiful hillside of Duluth — and beyond, as far as the eye can see. Greeting nearly every person who enters the facility will be the new St. Mary's Medical Center Chapel. This sacred space will offer the opportunity to celebrate Catholic Mass and services while welcoming all who seek a place for prayer and reflection.
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Digital Wayfinding
Digital wayfinding will make it easier than ever before to get around our downtown Duluth campus. When patients enter the hospital, they will find a wayfinding kiosk. With the help of an app on their smartphone, patients, and visitors can navigate the hospital and be provided with step-by-step instructions on how to get to their destination. This kiosk will also show instructions for those that don't want to use the app. Additionally, there are several two-way video intercoms on each floor of the hospital. These allow people to talk to a real person if they need directions.
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Enhanced Surgery Notifications
Enhanced surgery notifications will help visitors keep track of loved ones while they undergo a procedure. This is a text-based system that sends notifications to family and friends, updating them on every significant step of the patient's procedure from pre-op to post-op.
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Quality Care
Equipment in our operating rooms simplifies the complexities of a modern operating room while providing functionality that supports safety, efficiency, and positive clinical outcomes. This includes cameras and intercoms built right into the equipment that allows physicians to bring a colleague into a procedure virtually to provide feedback and answer questions.
Main Features
- Size - 942,000 square feet
- Patient Rooms - 344
- Beds - 346 – There are two double occupancy rooms in the NICU to accommodate twins.
- Construction Hours - 2.8 million union labor worker hours
- Care for Birds- There are 36 different frit patterns used for glass on the building - 32 of those patterns are unique to vision northland; fritted glass helps reduce bird strikes
- Data Cable - More than 500 miles of data cable were installed to accommodate the advanced technology of the building. That's enough cable to stretch from Duluth, MN to Omaha, NE.
- Energy Savings - Water use is 20% more efficient than LEED V4 baseline, thanks to plumbing fixtures such as high-efficiency toilets, sinks, and showers.
- Operating rooms - 16 operating rooms with three hybrid rooms.
- A pneumatic tube system - Similar to what you encounter at a bank drive-through — will greatly improve the transport of smaller items in the hospital. The replacement St. Mary’s Medical Center will incorporate about 12,000 feet of pneumatic tubes, with the capability to connect to existing systems in other buildings on our downtown campus as fast as 15 mph.