Tower of Dreams

The new patient tower at OU Health University of Oklahoma Medical Center has opened its doors, providing patients with the most advanced treatments and technology in a space designed for healing and comfort. The eight-story North Tower, which provides 144 additional beds and 32 new operating rooms, is the largest hospital expansion project in Oklahoma history and one of the largest in the nation. The new facility reflects the ongoing transformation of Oklahoma’s flagship comprehensive academic health system and its mission to provide services that Oklahomans need to achieve health.

The tower brings 450,000 additional square feet and a new medical Intensive Care Unit. Another floor is dedicated to hematology-oncology and bone marrow transplant, where OU Health Stephenson Cancer Center patients will receive treatments offered nowhere else in the state, including CAR-T, an immune therapy that harnesses the body’s own immune cells to recognize and eliminate cancer cells.

As home to Oklahoma’s only Level 1 Trauma Center, the University of Oklahoma Medical Center provides in-house expertise to treat the most traumatic and complex injuries. The North Tower increases the capacity and technology to care for those with the most severe injuries.

More noticeable to patients are the oversized rooms with extra space for families. All patient rooms have floor-to-ceiling windows that let in natural light, and because all rooms are on an outside wall, patients and families will have views of downtown Oklahoma City, the State Capitol and the OU Health Center campus. Nature was introduced in various ways, including natural elements in the design, a healing garden on the fourth floor and a courtyard garden on the first floor. The design of the North Tower, created by architecture firm Perkins & Will, is inspired by the Gloss Mountains northwest of Oklahoma City, a series of mesas and buttes where gypsum sparkles on the slopes.