The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center intends to consolidate UPMC South Side with UPMC Mercy and spend $75 million to $90 million on an expansion of Mercy's Uptown campus.

The South Side campus on Mary Street will begin moving to Mercy next summer and close over a period of five years.

"We anticipate the facility will be redeveloped," said UPMC spokesman Paul Wood.

UPMC South Side and UPMC Mercy are less than two miles apart. Employees who do not want to move will "be offered the opportunity to explore options elsewhere in UPMC," said UPMC Executive Vice President Elizabeth Concordia in an e-mail to employees this morning.

"Our intent is to minimize any impact on our patients, employees and physicians."

Many UPMC South Side physicians, she said, already practice at UPMC Mercy or other UPMC hospitals.

The Mercy renovations include the creation of a rehabilitation "center of excellence" -- the future home for UPMC South Side's Institute for Rehabilitation and Research -- as well an expansion of UPMC Mercy's emergency department, additional operating rooms, intensive care unit, and ambulatory capacity and enhancements in ear, nose and throat services.

The consolidation is scheduled to begin in July 2009, when rehabilitation beds and other inpatient servcies at UPMC South Side will be moved to UPMC Mercy or other UPMC hospitals. Ambulatory services, an urgent care center, physicians' offices, imaging and ambulatory surgery will not move for at least three to five years.

UPMC spokeswoman Susan Manko said the South Side hospital is not merging with Mercy for financial reasons. In fact, UPMC South Side recorded a 2.93 percent operating profit margin in fiscal 2007, according to a report out today from the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council. UPMC Mercy had a operating margin of 5.97 percent.

"We believe that consolidating these services is the right thing to do for our patients in order to provide the best possible care," Ms. Concordia said in her e-mail, "and it allows us to integrate duplicative services."