and “2” will be entirely dedicated to pediatrics

An expected expansion, which had a turning point on Monday in the Lombardy Region Council: the eighth tower will also arrive at the Papa Giovanni XXIII hospital in Bergamo, an intervention which is among those considered strategic in the regional context and for which one hundred million have been allocated of Euro.

The need for new spaces

The need for new spaces is a consequence of the progressive increase in activities provided by ASST Papa Giovanni XXIII, which has a continuously growing user base. A development that is the result of the performance of the Papa Giovanni XXIII Hospital, which attracts users from outside the province and has already saturated the spaces designed over two decades ago for years, and is a consequence of the results achieved by technological innovation and research clinic in the last decade. The new goals achieved by modern medicine have in fact allowed the introduction of increasingly effective cures and treatments and different therapeutic-assistance models based on the evolution of clinical conditions.

A new tower for oncohematology

Tower 8 will host the clinical and laboratory activities of oncohematology: the need for space is in fact particularly felt in this sector and in particular for outpatient and therapeutic activities which do not require hospitalization for several days (MAC and day-hospital for treatments of chemotherapy).

The new tower will be built in the western area, close to the Giardino dell’Incontro, with the same design layout as the other towers, with relative connections to the plate, in continuity with the architecture of the hospital.

A reorganization of spaces to optimize routes

The construction of a new tower for oncohematology activities will also allow the spaces in the other towers to be reorganized, such as:

– the revisiting of the spaces of tower 2 with the aim of transforming it entirely into a pediatric tower, without interference between the paths of children and those of adults;

– the revisiting of the spaces of tower 7 with the aim of dedicating it mainly to mental health, with the activation of child and adolescent neuropsychiatry beds.

The reorganization will also allow the optimization of paths which will also affect other strategic sectors: Neurosciences, surgical specialties, transplants, Cardiovascular, Medicine and the Critical Area.

Times

The company will proceed as soon as possible with the consequent documents following the financing up to the tender for the design of the eighth tower with the commitment to respect the three-year strategic grounding value indicated by the Lombardy Region.

Costs

Compared to the previous request, the economic financing commitment made to the Lombardy Region has changed because the expansion project of the Papa Giovanni XXIII Hospital also takes into account a broader and more organic reorganization of the spaces, activities and changed socio-economic circumstances that have occurred in recent times and the related increase in prices. The project will give broader scope to a healthcare reality that is a point of reference at a national level and beyond, with a more than twenty-year perspective.

History (1999-2024)

The project hypothesis for the construction of the Eighth Tower was presented by the ASST Papa Giovanni in the autumn of 2020 to the Lombardy Region, as part of the framework resolution on the multi-year investment plan, for an evaluation within the general framework of the system in light of the national funds for healthcare construction and any additional resources deriving from the Recovery Fund.

But the roots of the Eighth Tower lie in the past and can be considered a natural evolution of healthcare facilities over time: in 1997, thanks to Law 67/88 ex art. 20, the legislative bases were established to finance and launch projects to modernize healthcare infrastructures in Italy. This regulatory environment allowed the management at the time to plan the expansion and improvement of the hospital. The legislation facilitated access to the necessary funds and encouraged participation in international competitions for the design of new hospital structures.

– 1999 signature of the framework program agreement in Rome

– 2001 international competition in two phases

– 2002 final design

– 2003 executive design

– 2004 project validation and tender

– 2005 signing of the contract and start of works

– 07.26.2005 laying of the first stone

– Summer 2012 completion of works

– December 2012 Moving

Francesco Locati, General Director of the ASST Pope John XXIII

“Thanks to the Lombardy Region for the great attention shown also on this occasion towards our company and the Bergamo area. The need for new spaces for Pope John is real and this financing will allow us to reorganize the routes of the entire hospital complex and make the work of our professionals, in Bergamo and San Giovanni Bianco, more synergistic, for the benefit of our users, always more numerous and with increasingly complex needs. 25 years after the idea of ​​the new hospital in Bergamo, the financing of this project constitutes a further prospect of improvement in the healthcare panorama of Bergamo, Lombardy, Italy and internationally. In fact, the expected benefits will go beyond the Bergamo context and will become the heritage of all those who benefit from the care provided in Bergamo. The eighth tower will allow the implementation of advanced IT systems, crucial for the management of health data and medical research. The tower will not just be a place of treatment, but a center of innovation and research that looks to the future.

The path that led to the eighth tower, although covering only a few years, underwent such an acceleration that it equated to a progress of seventy years. The eighth tower process is a significant example of how technology and strategic vision can transform healthcare infrastructure, laying solid foundations for future generations.

The eighth tower project, conceived from the beginning as part of the original plan for the New Hospital, demonstrates the importance of having a long-term vision. The past is not just a memory, but an essential function for deciphering the present and building a sustainable and efficient future. Among the programmatic lines drawn up at the beginning of our mandate, we decided to promptly implement a project proposal which in the initial formulation dated back to 2021 and related to an expansion of the spaces for the new needs.

It was a proposal that was considered worthy of being included in the planning of the interventions of the Lombardy Region as confirmed by the initial discussions with the same

Looking at the documentation, the documents contained expansion project proposals with motivations that today are more relevant than ever, also due to the resumption of activities which stood at increasing values ​​compared to recent years and 2019. According to the scientific literature, all the epidemiological indicators indicate the expected increase in the impact of oncological, cardiovascular, neurodegenerative and metabolic diseases in the coming years. Based on these projections, the choice to expand and reorganize the spaces of Papa Giovanni responds to the challenges that await us in the future and will allow us to implement more adequate organizational models”.