UR Medicine Opens Region's First Ambulatory Orthopaedic Surgery Center

The UR Medicine Orthopaedics Surgery Center is the first in the world to offer a Clean Cube operating room, which offers automated disinfection and air handling systems for optimum patient safety.

Patients in the Western New York region who need ambulatory surgery for bone and joint conditions will experience a number of “firsts” when they visit the UR Medicine Orthopaedics & Physical Performance Surgery Center that opened in Henrietta on Feb. 20:

• It’s the first in the region designed and built specifically for patients with mobility problems who need orthopaedic outpatient surgery.
• It’s the first surgery center in the world to include a Clean Cube™ operating room – which uses advanced, automated disinfection and airflow for the highest level of infection prevention.
• It’s the first ambulatory surgery center in the region that will combine outpatient surgery with complementary services such as diagnostic imaging, physical therapy, physical performance training and gait analysis – bringing a new level of integrated care and convenience to patients.

The UR Medicine Orthopaedic Surgery Center is part of a multi-phase, $227 million construction project to build a comprehensive orthopaedics campus. When complete, the UR Medicine Orthopaedics & Physical Performance Center will be one of the largest and most comprehensive of its kind in the nation.

UR Medicine Orthopaedics provides 14,000 surgeries to patients in Western New York annually; it’s anticipated that 6000 of them will be performed at the new Henrietta site. The center’s features include:

• Eight new operating rooms dedicated to orthopaedic procedures – with room to build up to six more in the future
• Three procedure rooms (for providing medical infusions to treat osteoporosis, for example, and surgeries that can be performed with local anesthesia). There is space to add another procedure room in the future. The center’s procedure rooms opened Jan. 9.    
• Outpatient care with 23-hour-stay, single-bed rooms where patients can recover from surgery.
• Accessibility for the community. The center is on RTS bus routes and near the Thruway and expressways. A covered entrance for patient drop-offs and post-procedure pick-up, plus planned valet parking offer easy access for patients with mobility issues.
• Adjacent to the surgery center is a UR Medicine Imaging location that also opened Jan. 9 with a full complement of advanced imaging technology – X-ray, CT and MRI. The site offers diagnostic imaging to patients of Orthopaedics as well as other UR Medicine service lines.

The new ambulatory surgery center is designed for patients with mobility issues; above, patient waiting area.

The UR Medicine Orthopaedics center answers the growing demand for surgeries in the outpatient rather than hospital setting.

With the surgery center opening, approximately 330 UR Medicine providers and staff work onsite daily: 150 in administrative offices, 30 in the Procedure Rooms, 120 in Ambulatory Surgery, and 30 in Advanced Imaging. Orthopaedic cases are shifting from Sawgrass Surgery Center to Henrietta, freeing up OR time at Sawgrass for other UR Medicine clinical service lines.

Construction continues on other components of the Orthopaedics campus, including Physical Therapy; a Motion Lab for complex gait analysis and physical performance training studies; and the Center for Human Musculoskeletal Performance and Prevention which provides physical performance training and athletic injury prevention and rehabilitation. All are scheduled for completion in late 2023.