As SE Valley grows, hospitals emerge
By Angelique Soenaire
The Arizona Republic
MESA, Ariz. (Nov. 1, 2009) -- On Monday, Mesa will become home to the newest hospital in the Valley, the first children's hospital in Arizona designed and built from the ground up exclusively for kids.
Cardon Children's Medical, a $356 million hospital will open after two years of construction.
The seven-story tower with an attached two-story building will open its emergency department at 6 a.m.
But that's not the end of the hospital building in the southeast Valley, where a building boom is trying to catch up with a growing population.
According to recent population statistics from City-Data.com, since the 2000 census, Gilbert's population has grown 97 percent. Chandler has seen a 40 percent increase. Mesa, which now has a population approaching half a million, saw a 16 percent increase.
All of those people need medical care.
In three weeks, construction begins on Gilbert's M.D. Anderson Banner Cancer Center, a $107 million project, expected to open in 2011.
In December, Banner will announce when it plans to open Banner Ironwood Medical Center, a $128 million hospital, in Queen Creek that is built but may not open until 2011 due to the recession.
"The big story in Phoenix has always been about the huge influx of people coming to the metropolitan area and the health care scrambling to keep up with that influx," said Alwyn Cassil, spokeswoman for the Center for Studying Health System Change, a nonpartisan research group in Washington, D.C.
