ANN ARBOR, Mich., Dec. 14 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The University of Michigan Health System has received a $15 million gift from the Ted and Jane Von Voigtlander Foundation, the largest gift ever made to the Health System for women’s health. It will support the construction of a new women’s hospital.
If approved, the new hospital will be known as the University of Michigan Von Voigtlander Women’s Hospital. It is scheduled to open in 2012 as part of the new $754 million C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital and Women’s Hospital complex now under construction.
“This is an historic capital contribution for women’s health at the University of Michigan, and we are grateful to the Ted and Jane Von Voigtlander Foundation for this gift as well as for the Foundation’s continued support of our efforts to further medical care, training and research,” says U-M President Mary Sue Coleman.
“The new Von Voigtlander Women’s Hospital is going to build on its distinguished past,” Johnson says. “The most important thing that we do is provide unsurpassed patient care, and this gift is going to allow us to expand our services, expand into new space, and grow the technology that we use to provide cutting edge clinical care.”
“We are thrilled with this extraordinary gift from the Von Voigtlander Foundation,” says Patricia A. Warner, associate hospital director and chief administrative officer, C. S. Mott Children’s Hospital and Women’s Hospital. “This new state-of-the-art facility, with its new treatments and technology, will allow us to continue providing the best obstetric and pediatric patient care in Michigan and across the country. We thank Gwen Haggerty and her parents’ foundation for their generosity, support and commitment to women’s and children’s health.”
A native of Tennessee from a family of 10 children, Jane Von Voigtlander was a single mother working as a waitress at Weber’s restaurant in Ann Arbor when she first met Ted, who was then in the early days of building the chain of retail stores Discount Tire Co. It is now one of the largest independent tire dealerships in the country.
The current gift will be used to support the construction of the new C.S. Mott Children’s and Von Voigtlander Women’s Hospital. The Von Voigtlander Women’s Hospital will encompass all of the physical space occupied by the Women’s Hospital within the new C. S Mott Children Hospital and Women’s Hospital facility.
About the Von Voigtlander Women’s Hospital:
The women’s hospital will encompass a birthing center, a perinatal assessment center, a high-risk labor and delivery area, a neonatal intensive care unit, and a fetal surgery program.
The new Women’s Hospital Birth Center will feature 50 large, single labor, delivery and recovery rooms to allow for access of state-of-the-art technologies and interventions, as well as space for families to celebrate the birth of new babies. Deliveries are expected to reach 4,500 per year in the new hospital. The current hospital has 31 private rooms and approximately 3,800 births per year.
Fundraising Efforts:
In 2006, Dave and Jan Brandon made a gift of $4 million to the University, of which $2 million goes towards the construction of the neonatal intensive care unit (which will be named the Nick and Chris Brandon NICU in recognition of the gift) at the new hospital.
Green Bay Packers Charles Woodson donated $2 million to create a fund for research and for the construction of the hospital project. The lobby will be named after him.
For more information and to lend support to women’s and children’s care, visit: www.umwomenshospital.org.
University of Michigan Health System
