Providence Heart Institute to undergo $42 million renovation beginning spring of 2025

The 30-year-old Providence Heart Institute will see a $42 million renovation over the next four to five years.

Beset by financial difficulties and delays, plans for the modernization began before the COVID-19 pandemic. The project is set to break ground in the spring of 2025 and could take up to four years to complete. Because of this long time frame, care is not expected to be interrupted during renovations – though it may be moved.

Once complete, the modernized Heart Institute will accommodate 15% more patients and have a new pediatric catheterization lab for heart imaging and procedures.

“The Heart Institute is really the epicenter of all the heart work that’s done at Sacred Heart,” said the institute’s Executive Medical Director Dr. John Peterson. But while the design of the institute was “innovative” when built, it is now outdated, he added.

In its initial construction, the Heart Institute was set up as six different medical practices not integrated with each other or with Sacred Heart as a whole. Now that they are not separate, it is difficult for patients and providers to navigate the building, given its layout.

“It’s very choppy on the inside. There are at least eight waiting rooms throughout the building, and the infrastructure really makes it difficult to use the spaces efficiently,” Peterson said.

Katy Bruya has been a Heart Institute patient for over 15 years for a rare heart condition induced by pregnancy. While she received “great care” at the institute, the building itself was “very confused.”

“I’ve been there for over a decade walking those halls, and even at a young age, I would get confused about where to go. And I constantly see older patients with walkers and wheelchairs, and if they take a wrong turn, it just takes them much longer to find where they need to go,” she said.

Bruya has gone on to serve on the Providence Inland Northwest Foundation and has previously been on the committee tasked with overseeing this project.

Foundation Chief Philanthropy Officer Colleen Fox said these navigation issues make it difficult to have a positive patient experience .

“It’s really hard for patients to be able to know where they’re going,” she said. “We really want patients to walk into that building and feel like this is a really great place to receive world-class care. We know we have amazing cardiac care that happens with our providers at the Heart Institute, but the building really doesn’t reflect that.”

Renovations will occur in two phases beginning next spring, with each taking between 18 and 24 months. The first phase will focus on the first two floors of the building and will include a new welcome area, coffee kiosk and prayer room on the first floor, as well as a new pediatric cardiac catheterization lab. A covered walkway will be added between the building and its parking garage.

“A covered walkway on the north entrance sounds so simple, but it’s a big deal in the Northwest when we have inclement weather and snow. Patients need to be able to access the building safely,” Fox said.

The second phase of the project will renovate and move clinic suites to ease patient navigation and hospital operations. Space will be added to the north floor for administrative offices, and cosmetic upgrades will take place throughout the building.

The project was initially envisioned in 2019 but delayed because of the pandemic and Sacred Heart’s financial challenges. The hospital had $175.5 million in operating losses in 2023, according to Department of Health data.

Asked if Providence could afford the $42 million renovation given its financial losses, Fox said the hospital system “needed to work on financial recovery” before returning to the project.

While Providence is pouring $32 million into the project, the Providence Inland Northwest Foundation is raising the final $10 million through philanthropy. This sum is the largest amount raised by the foundation in any project to date, Fox said. Since beginning a fundraising campaign in 2021, the foundation has raised $7.5 million from individual donors and businesses.

This week, the foundation begins its public campaign to raise the last $2.5 million from residents in Spokane. Fox hopes to complete the fundraising by February 2025.

“There is no way this project would be moving forward right now but for how generous community members have been,” she said.