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Indiana University Health’s planned $4.3 billion hospital complex in Indianapolis, one of the most expensive capital projects in state history, is designed to be an “indispensable, always-ready facility” to treat some of the state’s sickest patients, the system’s top executive said Tuesday.
“That’s why this hospital is really an investment in the health of Hoosiers,” CEO Dennis Murphy told a lunch audience at the Economic Club of Indiana. “It’s how we continue to bring health to the state. And I think we are the only organization in the state who can take care of the truly complex and the sick.”
In a 35-minute speech, Murphy made the case that IU Health treats some of the sickest patients in the state and needs the best hospital possible to continue doing that.
IU Health has a higher mix of seriously ill patients than many other top-tier health systems in the country, including Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, NYU Lagone Health in New York City, and Stanford University Medical Center in Palo Alto, California, Murphy said. Many other big hospitals in the country routinely send tough cases to IU Health for treatment, he added.
“I have friends at Northwestern [Medicine in Chicago] who refer patients to IU Health, because they know there are better people here,” Murphy said. “I have friends [at Johns Hopkins Hospital] in Baltimore who do the same thing.”
About 20% of the patients who come to IU Health come from other hospitals in the state “who believe that we can take better care of them in our downtown hospitals than they can,” Murphy said.
IU Health’s planned new hospital, with the latest equipment and technology, will also help the Indianapolis-based system recruit and retain top physicians, nurses and other health care providers, he said.
“To maintain this level of excellence for decades to come, we needed to build a new downtown hospital,” Murphy told an audience of several hundred at the Indiana Convention Center. “And I’ll keep saying, one that’s worthy of the people who work there.”
The complex will stretch across a 40-acre site just south of IU Health’s century-old Methodist Hospital, at West 16th Street and North Capital Avenue. Construction work on the new hospital is underway, with patients set to move in near the end of 2027.
The hospital will consolidate much of the existing Methodist Hospital and University Hospital, about 1.5 miles southwest, on the IUPUI campus. The eight-block expansion will extend IU Health’s footprint south to 12th Street and from Capital Avenue to Interstate 65.
The complex will include a medical office building, a support building that will contain parking, a utility plant and retail space. It will also be home to the Indiana University School of Medicine’s education and research building.
The hospital, which has yet to be named, will have three patient towers that rise 16 floors. Altogether, it will contain 864 beds and 50 operating rooms.
The $4.3 billion price tag, which Murphy did not explicitly mention in his speech, but which IU Health revealed last year, does not include the cost of demolishing or renovating part of Methodist Hospital. IU Health has not yet announced what portions of the existing Methodist Hospital complex it plans to preserve or repurpose. The hospital, built in 1908 and expanded over the decades, is a hodgepodge of buildings and wing that have been stitched together, with mismatched floor plates, uneven ceiling and a conglomeration of electrical, mechanical and plumbing systems.
Murphy said the new hospital will save $50 million a year in heating, lighting and other operational costs, compared with the two existing downtown hospitals.
Even though it carries a high price tag, the new hospital will actually cost less per square foot than other recent big hospital projects across the country, Murphy said. When it’s done, IU Health’s new hospital will cost about $1,400 a square foot.
That’s cheaper than Mayo Clinic’s recent $5 billion expansion, which cost about $2,000 a square foot, or Stanford University Medical Center’s $2 billion new hospital, which cost about $2,400 a square foot, he said.
“We’re conscious of the cost,” Murphy said. “We want to make sure we’re building an efficient, cost-effective facility, because we know we have to be stewards of those resources.”
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It’s hard to argue that IUH provides very solid specialty care, as one would expect from a hospital system that is associated with a medical school as good & as large as IUSM. But IUH does not provide a great product to those who seek general care, and this is largely because they do not pay competitive rates for labor & instead overly rely on travel contracts. Hopefully the cost savings of the new hospital are rolled into higher wages.
Part of the problem appears to be that IUH relies on IU to supplement the high labor costs of specialists who both practice and research. This works out fine for compensating specialists well, but the strategy doesn’t work at all for hiring general medicine doctors or nurses.
The smoke and mirrors of IU Health and IU School of Medicine hides the glaring problem of the serious physician shortage in our State which is getting worse by the year. It also hides the shortage of both allopathic and osteopathic medical schools in our State. It also hides the fact that IU School is no where near top of any research medical school even in our surrounding States. I have been preaching for years that Purdue and Notre Dame need to have their own research medical schools. IU Health and IU school of Medicine have done a great PR job of glossing over the terrible status of healthcare in our State. It does not take long for examining national statistics to see Indiana health problems compared to other States.
Phillip D. Toth, MD, FACP
Well, for one, IUSM and IUH are separate entities. They essentially only work together when it comes to student clinicians, resident appointments, and hiring specialty docs who get a lot of research finding.
Most of the problems with IUH are the fault of IUH and IUH alone. They have serious retention problems because of bad working conditions and poor pay. Only specialists w/ research funding get good compensation, but they typically get paid through IUSM. It might be fair to say that IUH probably leeches off IUSM – I doubt that IUH would pay specialists high salaries on their own.
Anyway, Indiana is the 17th most populous state and has the 21st most med students. So there is a Delta there, but it’s only 4 positions.
IUSM is the biggest medical school in the US and it ranks well in many categories. Top-40ish in research, top 15 in NIH funding for public schools, top 20 for primary care education. It’s definitely not the best med school in the Midwest, but it’s up there & it’s competitive. And it’s a huge plus that they have campuses across the entire state.
Then there’s Marian, which has a sizable class of DO students as well. I don’t remember how big their class sizes are, but it’s bigger than I expected.
I don’t think there’s really demand for another MD school. If there was, Notre Dame and Purdue would’ve found a way to cash in. Instead, they strategically collaborate with IUSM. I could see the case for another DO school, though.
Spoken like true Hoosier. The smoke and mirrors have added a few flavors of KoolAid. All of the “great numbers” of IU only give a superficial understanding of the problems that we are facing in our State.
The reality is that Indiana has huge health problems and a serious health care provider shortage of ALL types.
see: https://www.indystar.com/story/news/health/2024/03/20/indiana-national-findings-report-2024-states-health-housing-education/73030786007/
In my opinion, IU, with all of its entities, has not done enough or is enough for our State.
Look at the State of Georgia. It is ranked 40 per capita for physicians and already is starting another medical school. This will be the sixth medical school for the State.
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hospital-physician-relationships/university-of-georgia-to-start-a-medical-school.html?utm_medium=email&utm_content=newsletter
It is unfortunate that there has not been enough coverage of the broader trends of health and research beyond the narrow boundaries of Indiana
All of the “great numbers” of IU only give a superficial understanding of the problems that we are facing in our State. The reality is that Indiana has huge health problems and a serious health care provider shortage of ALL types. See: https://www.indystar.com/story/news/health/2024/03/20/indiana-national-findings-report-2024-states-health-housing-education/73030786007/ In my opinion, IU, with all of its entities, has not done enough or is enough for our State. Look at the State of Georgia. It is ranked 40 per capita for physicians and already is starting another medical school. This will be the sixth medical school for the State. https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hospital-physician-relationships/university-of-georgia-to-start-a-medical-school.html?utm_medium=email&utm_content=newsletter. It is unfortunate that there has not been enough coverage of the broader trends of health and research beyond the narrow boundaries of Indiana