"For the past year, our board and leadership team have been exploring ways to improve the delivery of care to our patients by expanding access and providing more cost-effective services," says COO Sandra Fenwick. "Expanding the Children's Hospital network--through purchases, such as Sterling, and by strengthening existing partnerships--is clearly the right way to achieve these goals."

Sterling Medical Center is located at the former Waltham Hospital site and includes more than 400,000 sf of space on an 11-acre site near Route 95 and the Massachusetts Turnpike. Approximately 120,000 sf of space is currently leased to health care services. Among the tenants are Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center's oncology department and an urgent-care center run by Newton-Wellesley Hospital.

Children's plans to maintain current leases and undertake a six-month strategic-planning process to determine which hospital services could be moved to the Waltham site. "By providing more secondary and ambulatory care in the community, we will free up our Longwood campus for more intense tertiary and quaternary services for the region and continue to meet the medical needs of the children of Boston," says Dr. James Mandell, president and CEO of Children's Hospital Boston.