BRIGHTON, MI — The opening of a new hospital in Brighton is just weeks away, which means the hospital in Howell will also close.
Top officials from Trinity Health Livingston toured the new four-story, 174,000-square-foot hospital with the media on Thursday, April 2. The hospital will be an addition to the existing Trinity Health Medical Center Brighton at 7555 Grand River Avenue in Genoa Township, on the city’s outskirts.
On Sunday, April 19, Trinity Health will transfer patients from Howell Hospital, located at 620 Byron Road in the city, to the new Brighton Hospital to complete the transition.
Officials say the new hospital will have more patient beds, support the latest medical technology and provide room for growth as the Brighton area and other areas grow in population.
Hospital Director John O’Malley explained how the hospital expansion will add inpatient services on site. The preexisting health center already provided many services as an outpatient facility with an emergency department and surgical center.
“Think of it this way: On the other side of that wall is outpatient, and on this side of that wall is inpatient. By integrating the two, we can be very efficient in many ways,” O’Malley said. “It can be more efficient from a staffing perspective and from a technology perspective.”
As an example, if a patient on the outpatient side requires a scan and that side is full, that patient can be transferred to the inpatient hospital side to get the scan and its results more quickly.
“We have a lot of very advanced technology on this campus right now,” O’Malley said. “I think this campus will begin to serve this community for decades to come.”
He said Trinity Health recognized the need for more community care in the region about 12 years ago, comparing the area to an “island” more than 40 miles away from other high-end hospitals, such as Trinity Health Ann Arbor Hospital near Ypsilanti and other hospitals in Flint and Lansing.
The health system’s first goal was to address the shortage of primary care physicians, opening several Trinity Health IHA Medical Group facilities in the region.
“What this does is we’re able to bring a medical specialty and a surgical specialty to this community and accomplish the goal that we set at the time of trying to keep community health care as local as possible in terms of a full-service community hospital,” O’Malley said.
When it opens, Brighton Hospital will have 56 ‘acuity-adapted’ beds. These allow patients with different conditions and severity levels to be treated without having to be transferred between different hospital rooms.
That number of beds will immediately increase from Howell’s 52 beds.
In the future, the number of beds could increase to up to 96. This will include short-term stay beds and an unfinished “shell” space on the fourth floor where an additional inpatient wing will be built.
The new hospital side will add three operating rooms and a fourth unfinished space. There are also four operating rooms on the health center side, which will be increased to five and a sixth space will be added there.
Chief Medical Officer Dr. David Vandenberg said the area has long needed a community hospital.
Vandenberg said the hospital will specialize in two things.
“One is just a general community hospital,” including emergency care, he said. “The second is outpatient treatment and surgery.”
“We make good use of our outpatient surgery department and our inpatient surgery department,” he said. “The combination of those two is what drives the engine.”
For more severe trauma, Brighton Hospital also has access to Ann Arbor Hospital, a Level 1 trauma hospital, by lifesaving flight from the highway or on-site helicopter pad.
“Our close collaboration with Ann Arbor and its medical staff has resulted in more specialized care here,” he said. “And now that we’re closer, things will get even better. It’ll be even more attractive for doctors. They won’t have to travel as far, so they can cover both hospitals.”
He expects there will be less need to transport patients to Ann Arbor and it will be easier to transport them when needed.
The new hospital will also show improvements from the Howell location in imaging technology for diagnosing medical problems, including brand new machines, officials said. The new hospital will offer diagnostic imaging services not available at Howell Hospital.
Scott Bowers, the hospital’s director of imaging services, said the “breakthrough” is how much better image processing will be.
The new equipment includes a cardiac CT scanner, a SPECT/CT system, a fluoroscopy scanner that takes video images, and an MRI machine.
“Most of the imaging equipment in other hospitals is very old, 15 or 20 years old,” Bowers said. “Technology and imaging have advanced so much. We’re implementing AI in a lot of our imaging so we can get better diagnostic images faster and reduce radiation doses from the equipment that produces radiation.”
O’Malley said the hospital will also have a mobile dock where additional imaging equipment can be “pull up” when needed.
Michelle Wise, the hospital’s associate chief nurse, gave a tour of the inpatient unit Thursday.
“I think the layout, technology and workflow were very thoughtfully designed with nursing in mind, especially to allow more time at the patient’s bedside,” Wise says. “I spent less time on inefficiencies.”
Trinity is selling Howell Hospital to Catholic Healthcare International. In May 2024, Trinity Health Michigan officials announced a purchase and sale agreement to sell the hospital and 23 acres of land on which it sits to Catholic Healthcare and the School of Medicine.
The transition to the new hospital will begin at 4 a.m. on April 19th. Ambulances will be transferred to Brighton’s new emergency department.
The Howell Hospital building’s emergency department will continue to accept walk-in patients until 1 p.m. that day. All patients arriving by then will undergo a medical examination.
Additional staff will be present at both Howell and Brighton locations on the day of the move to ensure continuity of care for all patients.
Brighton Hospital’s public opening is scheduled for Saturday, April 11th from 10am to 2pm, with tours, a scavenger hunt with prizes to be won, the chance to try out surgical robots, and the chance to explore ambulances, fire engines, police and MedFlight emergency vehicles.
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