UNC Health and Duke Health are partnering to build a new children's health system that will include North Carolina's first freestanding pediatric hospital, the pair announced Tuesday.
The system, to be called NC Children’s, will be a private nonprofit entity featuring a 500-bed hospital, an outpatient care center and a behavioral health center.
The partners, both filing articles of incorporation with the state today, said they plan to break ground on the 100-plus-acre campus’ six-year construction by 2027. It will be built in North Carolina’s Research Triangle—the metro area where both UNC and Duke are located—though a specific location is yet to be determined.
The hospital is expected to open its doors “in the early 2030s,” though other services may kick off “several years earlier,” they said. All told, the project is budgeted to cost between $2 billion and $3 billion, meaning the project will “also require philanthropic investment as we build a healthier future for the children of North Carolina," the organizations said.
The universities said they had been eyeing a freestanding children’s hospital in the state for the past decade but weren’t able to kick-start talks on the collaboration until early last year, when the state legislation authorized an initial $320 million investment.
“Children are the heart of our future, and families across North Carolina deserve access to the most comprehensive, highest quality care for their children,” Craig Albanese, M.D., CEO of the Duke University Health System, said in a statement. “This is a tremendous and unique opportunity to work together to reimagine how we deliver life-changing care to our region’s most vulnerable and we are grateful for the support of our state’s legislature.”
UNC and Duke said they will transfer—and ultimately expand—all of their pediatric-related clinical services, programs and operations to NC Children’s once it’s up and running. Other research and education functions will remain with the two schools “for the foreseeable future, although they may be conducted at NC Children’s once operational, particularly clinical teaching and research,” they said.
They said they expect the new entity to pull more than $120 million in annual research funding from the National Institutes of Health, support more than 8,400 jobs (including construction) and drive over $26.8 billion in gross domestic product for North Carolina over two decades.
“There is a great deal of mutual respect between our institutions, and we both want the same thing for the children of North Carolina—the best care, close to home,” Wesley Burks, M.D., CEO of UNC Health and dean of the UNC School of Medicine, said in a release.