The 14-story Davidson Tower will contain 500 beds, 20 operating rooms, 50 intensive care beds, the Heart and Internal Medicine Institutes, all surgical and medical treatment divisions and all surgical, medical and cardiac intensive care units.
Each floor will house two departments with one and two-bed rooms. A four-bed “step-down” care unit in each department will obviate the need to transfer less critical patients to an intensive care unit.
The Tower will have satellite radiology and a dedicated imaging center; include all the hospital’s major supply services and possibly basic laboratory services. A sophisticated communications infrastructure will support seamless integration of all clinical and research projects and make patient information immediately available.
Most of all, the new Treatment Tower will provide a therapeutic environment for our patients and their families, with soothing healing gardens, rooms tailored to patient needs and a comprehensive resource center. Designed to enable Hadassah’s exceptional health-care professionals to extend their trailblazing work, there will be additional space for individualized medical treatments, gene and stem cell research, computer-guided surgery and other groundbreaking advances.
As medical modes and patients’ needs continue to change, so will the flexible interior. The new hospital tower will be easily adaptable to incorporate the pressures of progress with minimal disruption to patient care and comfort.
Even before construction began, Hadassah’s team of Israeli and American architects received an award for the building’s design. Anticipating the ‘Green Revolution,’ they incorporated many energy-saving devices and other innovations to ensure that the building would more than exceed today’s standards.
The Sarah Wetsman Davidson Tower features: the use of natural light wherever possible and a computerized lighting system that responds to external elements. The building will many other environmental-friendly innovations, among them: have radiant beam heating in the patients’ rooms, eliminating the need for electrical connections; rooftop centrifugal chillers with magnetic bearings allows us to reduce electricity usage; computerized control systems for optimum energy savings; the use of residual heat to conserve energy; and fuel-saving recycling of condensation water from the steam system.
From its beginning in 1912, Hadassah’s ability to initiate and innovate set the standard for medicine in Israel. An impressive list of achievements – each of them trailblazing in their time – is testimony to Hadassah’s vision and mission. For nearly a century, under Turkish rule, during the British Mandate, through the founding of the State and into the next millennium, Hadassah changed the face of Israel and the medical map of the Middle East forever – and continues to do so – with the Sarah Wetsman Davidson Tower. A pinnacle of excellence, its state-of-the-art structure, endowed with sophisticated equipment and professional expertise, will bestow the benefits of life for patients at their most crucial of times. Once again, Hadassah is creating a system and setting a standard for the highest quality of medical care in Israel.