Southwest Broward has a new place to get scanned, treated and seen without a trip across the county. Memorial Hospital Miramar, part of Memorial Healthcare System, has opened a four-floor outpatient building that brings advanced imaging, outpatient surgery, lab work, infusion and children's specialty care together in one place, with a cancer institute and a PET imaging center planned for its upper floors.

Floor by floor

The ground floor is where most visits will start. It holds CT, MRI, general ultrasound and women's imaging, along with the Memorial Outpatient Surgical Center, an outpatient lab with a room set aside just for children, and a benign infusion area with four private rooms for treatments like iron or other IV therapies that are not chemotherapy.

The second floor belongs to the kids. It is home to a Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital Specialty Center and U18 Sports Rehab. For Miramar and Pembroke Pines families who have been driving to Hollywood for pediatric specialists, that is the headline.

The building is designed to keep growing. Memorial says the third floor will become the future home of the Memorial Cancer Institute in Miramar, and the fourth floor is planned as a PET Imaging Center. No dates have been announced for either.

The machines that matter

The imaging suite is built around two serious pieces of equipment. The 256-slice CT scanner can capture an image of the heart in a single heartbeat, which helps when a patient's heart rate makes cardiac scans tricky. The 3T MRI runs Deep Resolve, an AI image reconstruction tool that Memorial says can cut scan times for certain exams by as much as 73 percent. Less time in the tube matters to anyone who has tried to hold still through a long scan, and it matters even more for kids.

That was a deliberate choice. The imaging services were designed together with Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital, and staff were trained in the needs of young patients, so a child's scan does not have to mean a trip to the main children's hospital campus. Extra CT capacity also means more patients can be seen each day, which should shorten the wait for an appointment.

Why it matters for southwest Broward

Miramar, Pembroke Pines and the rest of southwest Broward have grown fast, and getting an MRI or a pediatric specialist visit has often meant a drive east. Putting imaging, surgery, lab work and children's specialty care in one Miramar building brings more of that care closer to where people live.

The ground floor layout also means a single morning can cover a lot. A patient can have blood drawn, get an ultrasound or MRI and check in for an outpatient procedure without leaving the building, and parents can pair a child's lab work with a specialist visit upstairs.

Part of a bigger build

The Miramar building fits a pattern across Memorial Healthcare System, the public system governed by the South Broward Hospital District, which has been adding outpatient sites closer to where families live so that routine scans, lab draws and procedures do not have to happen inside a busy hospital. Outpatient buildings like this one are typically easier to get in and out of, with simpler parking and shorter walks, and they free up hospital capacity for patients who need to be admitted. With two more floors already spoken for by cancer care and PET imaging, the building should keep adding services in the years ahead.

Booking a visit

Most services here start with a doctor's order or referral. When your physician sends you for imaging, lab work or outpatient surgery, ask to be scheduled at Memorial Hospital Miramar's outpatient building. Families with a Joe DiMaggio specialist can ask whether follow-ups can move to the Miramar specialty center. The hospital's main number is 954-538-5000.