Temple Health plans women’s hospital at former Cancer Treatment Center location in Juniata Park

Temple University Health System will open a hospital for women at the former Cancer Treatment Centers of America location in Juniata that it bought in June for $12 million, Temple said Thursday.

“Temple University Hospital’s new specialty campus will offer women and families a safe, welcoming environment, complete with modern, spacious patient areas and outdoor landscaped walking trails creating a tranquil setting in the heart of Philadelphia,” Temple Health’s chief executive, Michael A. Young, said in a news release.

Young said Temple will spend $30 million refurbishing the building at 1331 E. Wyoming Ave.

The facility, expected to open late in 2022, pending regulatory approvals, will offer a range of specialty care for women, with an emphasis on maternity services. It will have 12 labor and delivery beds, 32 private post-partum beds, eight beds in an intensive-care unit, plus more than 75 exam rooms, radiology, mammography, MRI, and other services.

Temple will move most maternity services from its flagship hospital at 3401 N. Broad St. to the new location, officials said. In 2019, the most recent state data, 2,208 babies were born at Temple’s main campus. Pennsylvania Hospital led the city that year with 5,290 births.

In addition to ob/gyn services, Temple said, the new campus will offer other lines of specialty care for women. The lineup has not been finalized, but could include general surgery, breast surgery, vascular surgery, urology, internal medicine, cardiology, endocrinology, and behavioral health, Temple said. Cancer care, which Temple offers at Fox Chase Cancer Center and other locations, is not included.

The women’s hospital will also have a 36-bed neonatal intensive care unit named for the the Percival Roberts Jr. Trust, which is making a “significant” donation to the facility, Temple said. Temple now has 26 neonatal intensive care beds, according to state data. The trust, named for a steel executive whose family founded the historic Pencoyd Iron Works in Lower Merion, was created in 1914 to support a children’s hospital or children’s wards in adult hospitals in Philadelphia.

Opening the former Cancer Treatment Centers campus will make space available at Temple’s 536-bed main hospital in North Philadelphia, which during three of the last four quarters was operating at more than 90% capacity, according to a presentation Thursday to municipal bond investors.

During the quarter ended Sept. 30, Temple reported operating income of $56 million, up from $5 million the year before. The nonprofit’s quarterly revenue of $618 million, up from $535 million last year, benefited from a $42 million increase in state funding, partly from a new program on opioid use disorder.