IT’S A PRETTY BIG DEAL
450 TONS
OF CO N C R ET E R E I N FORC IN G STEEL
2,700 TONS
OF ST RUC T U RA L ST E E L
100,000 SQUARE FEET OF MODIFIED B I TU M E N R OOFING
16 | M.T. Mustian Center
“It’s looking like hips and knees,” quipped TMH’s Vice President, Chief Financial Officer Bill Giudice. “Back in the day 10 years ago, your stay was five, six, seven days in the hospital. Now it’s two and three days, and it’s rapidly reaching the point where you’ll have major joint replacement on an outpatient basis. We’re watching these trends change.” Those staying in the hospital will have more need of ICU and intermediate care, he said. And before the M.T. Mustian Center, “we had an inadequate facility for that.” O’Bryant says it’s an economic boon any time a doctor sets up a practice in Tallahassee. “That’s about a million-dollar business for every new (physician) that comes in,” he said. “What it does more than anything else is it gives people access to services and a medical home so they don’t have to leave. This is a transformative facility, to say the least.” It also greatly widens the area served by TMH as patients travel here for surgeries and services. “That will continue to make a difference to bring patients here who don’t have the ability or means to get to California or Minnesota or New York, and now they can get (care) right here in Tallahassee,” said Alford. “That’s going to be a real benefit for patients and families.”
As her role as project manager for the M.T. Mustian Center winds down, Katie Hill, Project Manager of the M.T. Mustian Center, echoes the sentiments of many of those involved in the planning and construction of a facility that changes Tallahassee’s landscape and the lives of those who will use it. “I almost feel kidlike, I guess, sometimes when I see it,” she said. “The contractor does this business a lot. The architect designs buildings a lot. But to see something like this coming out of the ground like it has, and the impact it’s going to have on treating patients, it’s pretty exciting.” While the M.T. Mustian Center building — one of the biggest single construction projects in Tallahassee — is an impressive structure, there is a value to the community that goes far beyond bricks and mortar. “We always talk about the quality of life of Tallahassee. We have a great quality of life and we brag about it,” said O’Bryant. “One of those foundational components of quality of life is quality of health, and no organization has a greater responsibility in affecting and impacting the quality of health in our region than TMH. We want to improve the quality of life to our community by providing a better, more secure, safer environment for the quality of health of this region.”