UNC Health’s planned new hospital in Research Triangle Park is part of a larger effort by the Triangle’s big three health systems to serve the fast-growing heart of the region.
State regulators have now approved two new hospitals in the N.C. 540 corridor, the one in RTP and Duke Health’s planned 40-bed acute care hospital on Green Level West Road in Cary.
In addition, WakeMed and Duke Health have proposed a new 52-bed rehabilitation hospital in Apex, marking the first time the two health systems have sought to build something together.
The new hospitals will benefit from being in one of the fastest growing parts of North Carolina. The towns of Apex, Holly Springs, Morrisville and Fuquay-Varina were all in the top 35 statewide for population growth over the last decade. Add in Cary and more than 100,000 additional residents have poured into western Wake County since 2000.
Hospital systems have already bulked up to meet growing demand. WakeMed received permission to add 30 acute care beds to its hospital in Cary, bringing the total there to 208. And UNC Rex plans to open a new 40-bed hospital in Holly Springs in November.
But with population continuing to grow, more are on the way. Here’s what is planned and proposed:
This summer, state regulators approved Duke’s plans to build a 40-bed hospital in western Cary. The hospital, which will have two operating rooms and a 24-hour emergency department, will be built on Green Level West Road at the interchange with N.C. 540.
Duke Green Level Hospital has been in the works for years. Duke Health began buying land in 2016, about 70 acres in all, and Cary rezoned the property to allow not only the hospital but also office buildings, retail, apartments and a hotel.
Duke has begun building an urgent care center on the property that is scheduled to open in 2023. The 100,000-square-foot building will also offer primary care, pediatrics, women’s health, orthopedics, sports medicine, physical therapy and gastroenterology and endoscopy services. Duke also plans a radiation therapy center for cancer patients on the site.
Duke won approval for the new hospital in part by proposing to move 40 inpatient beds and two operating rooms from Duke Raleigh Hospital on Wake Forest Road. The shift will shrink the number of licensed inpatient beds at Duke Raleigh from 186 to 146 and the number of operating rooms from 15 to 13.
Duke argued that Green Level Hospital will primarily serve Wake residents who are now patients at either Duke Raleigh or Duke University Hospital in Durham.
WakeMed and UNC both disputed that, with UNC calling the project “an unreasonable attempt to gain massive amounts of market share from other providers” by simply moving hospital beds, operating rooms and other services to western Wake. WakeMed, which operates two standalone emergency rooms at Apex and Brier Creek as well as one at the Cary hospital, also said Duke’s emergency department wasn’t needed.
State regulators disagreed and issued a “certificate of need,” under a process that aims to prevent hospitals from building unnecessary facilities that could drive up health care costs or hurt quality.
Duke plans to begin construction on the new hospital in April 2023 and open for business in the summer of 2026. The hospital will cost an estimated $235 million to build and equip.
State regulators just approved UNC’s plans for a 40-bed hospital with four operating rooms off N.C. 54 across from The Frontier, in the heart of RTP. The $252 million hospital will be similar in size and services to the new Rex hospital in Holly Springs, though with 10 fewer inpatient beds.
The RTP hospital will be in the Durham portion of the park, about 2.5 miles from the Wake line. In its application for a certificate of need, UNC said it expected 90% of patients at the new hospital would come from Durham County, and only 9.2% from Wake.
But the hospital’s location so close to fast-growing western Wake makes that number unrealistic, according to WakeMed. In a response to UNC’s request, WakeMed told regulators that “a surreptitious motive for the project is to attract Wake County patients to the new facility.”
“It would appear farfetched to assume that the applicant is committed to spend over $250 million to develop a facility that will simply maintain its existing market shares in Durham County,” WakeMed wrote.
Duke opposed the RTP hospital because it believes it can better meet the needs of Durham residents. Duke has proposed adding 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 RTP hospital isn’t expected to open until the summer of 2026.
Duke and WakeMed this month proposed building a hospital for people recovering from serious medical conditions, such as stroke or orthopedic injuries or major surgery or illness. Kindred Healthcare, a national specialty hospital company based in Louisville, Kentucky, would be in charge of day-to-day operations.
The rehab hospital would be built on the Apex Peakway, across from WakeMed’s Healthplex. If the state approves, the 62,000-square-foot, $3.3 million hospital would open in 2023.
Duke and WakeMed are not asking regulators for new rehab beds; instead, they propose to move 33 existing beds from WakeMed’s campus in Raleigh and seven from Duke Regional in Durham. Duke holds a license for the remaining 12 but hasn’t used it yet.
By combining already-licensed beds in Apex, the proposed hospital allows Duke and WakeMed to provided services in a place neither could afford to alone, said Carolyn Knaup, WakeMed’s senior vice president of Strategic Ventures and Ambulatory Operations. It also would allow them both to replace older, semi-private rooms with 52 new private ones.
“We both recognize that we had an opportunity to use assets differently, and we both felt that because the county is growing so much, expansion at the Raleigh campus or expansion at the Duke campus didn’t necessarily meet the needs of the community,” Knaup said. “So let’s put our heads together and figure out if we can do something different that would allow us to combine our efforts and create a new facility.”
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