UNC Health proposes a hospital in RTP, but Duke University Hospital has other ideas
UNC Health wants to build a 40-bed hospital in Research Triangle Park, but first it must persuade state regulators to approve the project over a competing proposal from Duke University Health System.
UNC and Duke are each proposing to provide additional acute care beds and operating rooms in Durham County. The state Department of Health and Human Services has determined the county is running a deficit of 40 hospital beds and four operating rooms.
UNC proposes to fill that need with a new $252 million hospital near where N.C. 54 crosses N.C. 147 in RTP. The hospital would have two operating rooms, a full emergency department, a range of imaging services and an obstetrical unit for delivering babies that includes two dedicated C-section operating rooms.
The hospital would be the only one in the fast-growing heart of the Triangle, about halfway between UNC’s hospitals in Chapel Hill and Raleigh, said UNC spokesman Alan Wolf.
“There’s just so much demand coming as the population booms,” Wolf said. “UNC wants to be in the right place to provide care.”
Meanwhile, Duke has proposed to add 40 inpatient beds and two operating rooms to Duke University Hospital in Durham and two operating rooms at its Arringdon ambulatory surgery center off Page Road. The increases at the hospital would give Duke 986 licensed acute care beds and 69 operating rooms at the county’s largest medical center near the Duke University campus.
In a brief statement, Dr. Monte Brown, Duke’s vice president for administration, noted that the state’s determination that the county needed more hospital beds was based on demand at Duke.
“It was the high utilization at Duke University Hospital that generated the need for additional acute care capacity in the state medical facility plan in Durham County,” Brown wrote.
Both Duke and UNC have requested a “certificate of need” from the state, under a process that aims to prevent hospitals from building unnecessary facilities that drive up health care costs. Hospital systems need a certificate before going ahead with construction or expansion.
The process can be long and contentious. Novant Health, based in Winston-Salem, proposed to build a hospital in Holly Springs in 2008 and again in 2011, but was turned down both times by state regulators. UNC Rex Hospital in Raleigh proposed its own Holly Springs hospital in 2011 and won state approval the following year, over objections from Novant and WakeMed.
Holly Springs hospital took a decade
Novant filed an appeal in court, but dropped its legal fight in 2014 after two decisions in Rex’s favor. Construction didn’t get started until 2019, as Rex and UNC focused on building a heart and vascular center in Raleigh. Now UNC Health Rex Holly Springs hospital is expected to open at the corner of N.C. 55 and Avent Ferry Road in September, a decade after Rex applied for permission to build it.
UNC’s proposed RTP hospital would be similar in size and services to Rex in Holly Springs, which will have 50 acute care beds, a 24-bed emergency department and a maternity center.
The RTP hospital would be built on 34 acres across N.C. 54 from The Frontier, in the heart of the park. UNC has agreed to buy the property, known as the Progress Center, and demolish the existing buildings. The owner, a partnership that includes Highwoods Properties of Raleigh, is allowing leases to expire or relocating tenants from the buildings, according to UNC’s certificate of need application.
From its flagship medical center in Chapel Hill, UNC Health has grown into a 12-hospital system stretching from Hendersonville in the mountains to Jacksonville on the coast. The RTP hospital would be UNC’s first acute care center in Durham, where Duke is based and has two hospitals.
Assuming UNC gets state approval, the RTP hospital isn’t expected to open until the summer of 2026, Wolf said.
