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Indiana University Health said this week that its $4.3 billion downtown hospital complex, which will comprise 2.5 million square feet, is on budget and schedule as it approaches the halfway mark in its construction.
“We’re probably about 40% complete,” IU Health Vice President of Design and Construction James Mladucky told IBJ on Tuesday during a project update.
The Indianapolis-based academic hospital system broke ground on the project in March 2022 and expects the new facility to open in late 2027. The 44-acre campus will span from 16th to 12th streets and from Capitol Avenue to Interstate 65—approximately eight square blocks.
The south support building will have space for 22 semitrucks to deliver food, linens and other supplies for the hospital.
The new hospital, consisting of three, 16-story towers, is designed to combine and replace nearby Methodist Hospital, at West 16th Street and North Capitol Avenue, and University Hospital, about 1 ½ miles away on the IU Indianapolis campus.
IU Health has not revealed the name for the new hospital, which will include 1 million square feet dedicated to inpatient care.
This month, IU Health expects workers to turn on the hospital’s main distribution frame, or MDF, the main hub for the system’s communication data network. This fall, IU Health expects to complete the exterior covering of the hospital, and the roof is expected to be finished by the end of the year.
Just how massive is the new IU Health hospital project?
“This is the largest in the Western Hemisphere,” said Nick Wojciechowski, IU Health vice president of project planning and operations.
About 2,000 construction workers are on the campus daily, combining for about 3.9 million hours worked so far.
Last year, the University of California at San Francisco broke ground on its new $4.3 billion, 15-story Health Helen Diller Hospital. The 880,000-square-foot facility is expected to open in 2030 with 682 beds.
The new IU Health hospital will have 864 beds, slightly more than the combined total of Methodist and University hospitals now. The new facility also will include 50 operating rooms and 380 outpatient exam rooms.
Each inpatient room is 325 square feet, which IU Health said is large enough to give it the flexibility to switch rooms to critical care if needed.
“With the COVID pandemic, we saw that patient acuity rose very quickly,” said Amanda Noth-Matchett, IU Health’s chief nursing officer for Adult Academic Health Center. “With our older spaces, it was challenging for us. We had to retrofit a lot of different things to be able to provide that high level of acuity.”
IU Health said more than 250 of its clinical care team members provided input for the design of patient rooms.
The hospital system said the $4.3 billion cost of the hospital complex is made up of $2.3 billion for the new hospital and $1.98 billion for additional facilities on the downtown medical campus and neighboring properties.
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So … it’s the largest *what* in the western hemisphere? Hospital project? Construction project, period?
Article was pretty clear.
This is going to be a pretty cool hospital facility and campus when completed!!
I’m excited about it 🤗