Fairview Health Services and the University of Minnesota announced today a gift of $50 million from Caroline Amplatz, J.D., to honor her father, former University professor and medical device pioneer Kurt Amplatz, M.D. In recognition of the gift, the new facility will be named University of Minnesota Amplatz Children's Hospital. The hospital, which broke ground last summer, is on schedule to open by mid-2011.
"I am thankful that all of you have joined me in honoring my father as a humanitarian," said Caroline Amplatz. "Today we can celebrate for the children and their families who will benefit from this new hospital. My hope is that the Amplatz Children's Hospital will follow in my father's footsteps with steadfast and unrelenting determination to improve and save lives. I know that by embracing this history, the new pediatric hospital will be the best in the world."
"This gift provides our community a chance to honor one of the great pioneers of medical research and of Minnesota's medical device industry," said Robert Bruininks, Ph.D., president of the University of Minnesota. "A contemporary of Dr. C. Walton Lillehei and Earl Bakken, Kurt Amplatz is a trailblazer who continues to be committed to improving patients' lives through the development of innovative technologies. This gift is a tribute to a man who has touched many lives, but also to his daughter Caroline, her sense of history and her vision."
The new state-of-the-art University of Minnesota Amplatz Children's Hospital will be an ecologically friendly, 96-bed, 227,000-square-foot facility that consolidates in one patient- and family-centered location the hospital's 50 pediatric specialties. This is not an expansion of pediatric beds, but a replacement of children's services that are challenging to access in the current hospital configuration in which children's services are housed within the adult hospital. The project's estimated cost is $275 million—$175 million of which has been secured in bonds for financing; the remaining $100 million will be raised through philanthropy.
"The gift from Caroline Amplatz advances our vision to create a new children's hospital facility on the Riverside campus uniting mothers' and children's services in one family-friendly location," said Mark Eustis, Fairview president and CEO. "The new facility also will house some of the country's leading pediatric research programs. It is very fitting for this new building to bear the name of an esteemed U of M researcher."
Caroline Amplatz's gift of $50 million over 12 years will help pay for the programs and infrastructure needed to support pediatric research and care. Among the areas that will benefit from the gift is a pediatric hybrid catheterization lab designed to accommodate both a cardiac surgical team and an interventional cardiology team to treat children with damaged hearts. The hybrid lab allows for surgical intervention if necessary during a less invasive interventional procedure, eliminating the need for more anesthesia and reducing the child's hospital visits. In addition, the gift will support Adopt A Room, a philanthropy-supported program that creates family-friendly private rooms featuring state-of-art technology and special features that pediatric patients can control themselves.
Kurt Amplatz, a professor of radiology for more than 40 years, joined the University in 1957 and retired in 1999. A pioneer in the use of noninvasive techniques, he holds more than 30 patents. His inventions bridged medical disciplines and included devices such as high-resolution x-ray equipment, heparin-coated guide wires, sheathed needles for angiography, specially shaped cardiac catheters and vascular occlusion devices. The most famous of his inventions is the Amplatzer® septal occluder, a tiny device used to repair a congenital heart defect in children and adults. It replaced open-heart surgery as the treatment of choice for many thousands of patients.