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Mass General Brigham Releases Vision for Modernized Brigham Inpatient Building

5 minute read
artist rendering to illustrate vision of new Brigham Longwood inpatient building

Mass General Brigham today announced a vision for state-of-the-art space at its Brigham and Women’s campus in Longwood. This fall, the system will begin a planning process that will transform the Brigham campus by replacing the aging Braunwald building with a new complex care inpatient building that will be designed to facilitate multidisciplinary disease-focused care, led by the system’s patient-focused Institutes and world-renowned clinical departments.

The system is beginning a multi-year journey to realize this vision, building on previous analysis and design work to modernize the largest existing inpatient building on the Brigham campus. An inclusive and collaborative process will engage clinicians, patients, and community members, whose insights will inform the development of a project plan and the design of the new building. Outreach includes extensive engagement with nearby neighborhoods and community groups, as well as coordination with city and state agencies to obtain necessary regulatory approvals. The goal is for beds in the new building to come online in the 2030s.

“The redevelopment of our main inpatient Longwood building is a cornerstone of Mass General Brigham’s forward-thinking strategy to define the next generation of research-driven, world-class treatment, as we invest in facilities that will enable life-changing care for our patients for generations to come,” said Scott Sperling, Chairman, Board of Directors, Mass General Brigham.

“Our vision for the redevelopment of our primary inpatient building on the Brigham campus will enable the future of innovative, life-changing inpatient care for the patients we serve,” said Anne Klibanski, MD, President and CEO, Mass General Brigham. “Mass General Brigham is home to the brightest minds in medicine, working collaboratively to advance progress and improve outcomes for our patients and communities, driven by research. We are committed to providing top-tier facilities to enable that work to continue for decades to come.”

“Our academic medical centers are home to world-renowned experts who deliver exceptional care to patients from across the region and around the globe,” said David F. M. Brown, MD, President, Academic Medical Centers, Mass General Brigham. “Our plan to redevelop our inpatient building on the Brigham campus, ensures that we will build the infrastructure and technological capabilities required to care for the patients of tomorrow. It’s a necessary step toward our sustained commitment to shaping the future of medicine through excellence in clinical care, discovery, and innovation.”

artist rendering to illustrate vision of new Brigham inpatient building

The vision is centered on the replacement of the Braunwald building, a 564–bed inpatient facility, that after nearly 50 years of service, is nearing the end of its functional life. The current facility comprises mostly double rooms, inadequate elevators, and outdated operating rooms and services.

The new building is envisioned to replace the beds in the Braunwald building, featuring single inpatient rooms that provide optimal space for healing, above-grade operating rooms, and extensive capabilities to support the development and delivery of next-generation therapies and treatments. To create a seamless patient experience and maximize collaboration, the new building will enable the co-location of care teams focused on disease areas, aligned with the system’s effort to create disease-focused, multidisciplinary institutes. 

This new building will help Mass General Brigham meet the growing care needs of the Greater Boston community and beyond for decades to come. New single-room inpatient capabilities will support infection control and optimal patient experience, while helping ease Emergency Department overcrowding driven by an ongoing capacity crisis and a continued lack of available inpatient beds in existing double-bed rooms.

It will also support transfers of critically ill patients from the community into an academic medical center setting, freeing up our community hospitals to provide more appropriate levels of care, with a particular focus on ensuring patients access secondary care in more affordable community settings that are closer to home, rather than in academic medical centers. These transfers are facilitated through Mass General Brigham’s Patient Transfer and Access Center, which addresses the ongoing capacity crisis by enabling transfers between hospitals to get patients access to the right bed as quickly as possible.

Together, these investments support the care needs of today and tomorrow, enabled by the system’s integrated care delivery system, including a uniform patient care and quality strategy, integrated medical departments, and disease-focused institutes in Cancer, Heart and Vascular, and Neuroscience.

Media contact

Terry MacCormack
Program Director, Communications
tmaccormack@mgb.org

About Mass General Brigham

Mass General Brigham is an integrated academic health care system, uniting great minds to solve the hardest problems in medicine for our communities and the world. Mass General Brigham connects a full continuum of care across a system of academic medical centers, community and specialty hospitals, a health insurance plan, physician networks, community health centers, home care, and long-term care services. Mass General Brigham is a nonprofit organization committed to patient care, research, teaching, and service to the community. In addition, Mass General Brigham is one of the nation’s leading biomedical research organizations with several Harvard Medical School teaching hospitals. For more information, please visit massgeneralbrigham.org.