Temple University Health System is currently awaiting the PA Department of Health’s approval of its new Hospital for Women’s Health. The new campus which was acquired in June, is located at 1331 East Wyoming Avenue, and will host the potential hospital. If approved the campus will be operational in late 2022.

Among the services and amenities that will be offered is overall maternity care. In 2020 alone, Temple University Hospital delivered over 2,200 babies. It has also had no instances of obstetrical mortality in over five years. This new facility would have more ways to help both the person giving birth and the babies, keeping up this record. 

This includes featuring 10 labor & delivery rooms, four high-risk antepartum rooms, and a triage and stabilization area. There will also be a larger neonatal unit with 10 private and 26 semi-private beds. By contrast, TUH’s maternity unit has no triage area, no antepartum rooms, and only 26 NICU beds. 

There will be over 60 exam rooms for the other non-maternity services that will be offered, such as endocrinology, cardiology, and internal medicine. There will also be five operating rooms.  

Upgraded amenities aren’t the only thing that will help patients. One of the main reasons attributed to TUH’s maternity unit having such a spotless record when it comes to obstetrical mortality is its proximity to the rest of the hospital. 

As a Level 1 trauma center, if anything starts to go wrong help can come from a few floors away, as opposed to a few miles.  

This is one of the main reasons staff at TUH have expressed concern about the new campus. The other is potential patients in North Philadelphia being able to get to the new hospital. 

Temple Health is addressing these concerns by getting input from members of the staff, including the Chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the Director of Obstetrics and Maternal Fetal Medicine. They will also be forming and meeting with a patient and family advisory council (PFAC). This council will allow them to get feedback from patients and their families about the new campus. 

In terms of patients being able to get to the hospital, Temple Health said that there is a bus route that runs nearby. They are also looking into providing supplemental transportation based on the needs of the patient. 

In addition to the medical side, there is also office space on the campus. It will be available to use in the spring of 2022 and replace the Temple Administrative Services Building, which was extremely damaged in a fire last year.