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Four years ago, Genesys Health System in Flint surprised state officials with an act as rare as a physician house call: It dropped 60 beds from a certificate to build a hospital.
"You ever hear of another health system asking to reduce the number of beds on a (certificate of need)?" said a smiling Young Suh, 61, the system's president and CEO.
Usually the opposite is true. But Genesys, a division of Ann Arbor-based Sisters of St. Joseph Health System Inc., is changing the way health care is delivered in Genesee County, and possibly northern Oakland County as well.
At the heart of its strategy is an ultramodern new hospital being readied in rural Grand Blanc Township, 11 miles south of Flint and one mile north of the border of fast-growing Oakland County.
More accurately it's a $250 million medical campus set among woods and surrounded by 500 acres of rolling farmland owned by the system. It is called Genesys Regional Medical Center at Health Park.
The building, which includes medical offices, labs and 379 inpatient beds, won't open until January. Yet Suh has entertained health-care professionals from as far away as Australia, Japan and Egypt wanting a glimpse at the breakthrough layout and design.
At the hospital, every patient will get a room with a view, either of the woods or of one of the two landscaped interior courts,
Instead of central nurses' stations on floors, a small stand will allow an on-duty nurse to watch five or six rooms at a time. To provide...