Pediatric Medical Office Building
The new facility will house the pediatric clinics, plus offices for faculty and staff

Ted Chambers, photographed at the entrance to the Pediatric Medical Office Building on Wolfe Street, with just seven weeks to go until ribbon-cutting.

Situated between the Orleans Garage and Wolfe Street, the four-story all brick and glass building is connected on two levels to the garage. It is long, narrow and, at 60,000 square feet, deceptively large. On the ground level and first floor are more than 75 exam rooms as well as treatment areas and private spaces for gathering “HIPAA-compliant” personal health information. The second and third floors house nearly 150 faculty and staff offices.

The move will take place in two phases, with the Harriet Lane Clinic, now located in Jefferson, the first to move in July. “The Lane” will be on the first floor; faculty and administrative offices, on the second. The Pediatric Specialty Clinic, now located on level 8 of the Outpatient Center, will move to the ground level at the end of October. This large, multispecialty clinic includes medical pediatric services like pulmonary, endocrinology, GI, allergy and nephrology as well as general pediatric surgery and genetics.

When the move is complete, two-thirds of all pediatric faculty will be in the PMOB. (For lack of a better name, that is what the building is currently called.) “They’ll have lots more room,” says Ted Chambers, Pediatrics’ administrator. “Every faculty member will have his or her own office. With decent views and natural light, it will be a far cry from Park.”

But it will also be about as far away from Park and the adjacent Children’s Center as you can get while still remaining on the East Baltimore campus. And it will take three more years until the building is connected by pedestrian bridge to the new hospital. “We’re untethered to the rest of the campus,” says Chambers, “and that makes things complicated.”

Fortunately, says Chambers, his team found ways to mitigate the challenges. Most involve a little extra manpower. Mindful of the building’s relatively remote location, the team has requested three security officers during the day and coverage at nights and on weekends. A reliable corps of runners will take lab specimens to Weinberg, as the tube system cannot function until a bridge connects the PMOB directly to the hospital.

The Pediatric Medical Office Building, looking northwest from Fayette Street.

The Pediatric Medical Office Building is opening one month later than anticipated. “But the delay” says Chambers, “has enabled us to resolve some of these problems and train people to use new systems.” One example is Vocera. Straight out of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” Vocera, already in use in the pediatric intensive care unit, is a wireless, hands-free, voice-activated device that users carry around their necks. They can talk with any co-worker within range of the Wi-Fi network, an important feature given the PMOB’s size.

Opening three years in advance of the Critical Care and Children’s Towers, the building will test some of the planned, new ways of delivering care. Here, for example, care will be patient-centric. Rather than having the patient move from service to service, practically all services will be brought right into the exam room. “The institution really has put into place a very far-sighted plan in creating this building,” says Chambers. “It’s a major step forward.”

The building does not yet have an official name. Perhaps it will be named in honor of a donor. Perhaps, says Chambers, it will incorporate the name of Harriet Lane to honor a clinic that has served East Baltimore for nearly 100 years. “At least,” he says, “it won’t be PMOB forever.”