UPMC To Build 3 New Hospitals In $2 Billion Expansion

PITTSBURGH, PA - Medical conglomerate UPMC is investing $2 billion in a transformative expansion plan that will result in three new specialty hospitals being built in Pittsburgh.

The UPMC Heart and Transplant Center, the UPMC Hillman Cancer Hospital and the UPMC Vision and Rehabilitation Hospital will rise on the existing campuses of UPMC’s Presbyterian, Shadyside and Mercy hospitals, respectively.

The vision and rehab hospital is slated to open in 2020, the cancer hospital in 2022. UPMC did provide an anticipated date for the opening of the heart and transplant center, a 15-story building that will be built on the site of the former Children’s Hospital.

“Our transformative vision will make available the most innovative treatments for cancer, heart disease, transplantation, diseases of aging, vision restoration and rehabilitation, among many others,” UPMC CEO Jeffrey Romoff said in announcing the expansion. ”Working in partnership with the University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health sciences, we will radically change healthcare as we know it to provide personalized, effective and compassionate care.”

UPMC also announced that it will collaborate with Microsoft to build what Romoff termed these new “digital hospitals of the future.”

“Building on our existing research collaboration with Microsoft and its Azure cloud platform, we will apply technology in ways that will transform what today is often a disjointed and needlessly complex experience for patients and clinicians,” he said. “UPMC and Microsoft will have more to share in the coming months.”

UPMC’s expansion was detailed about two weeks after Highmark Health and the Allegheny Health Network announced a more than $1 billion investment in new facilities and capital projects in southwestern Pennsylvania, including a new 160-bed hospital, full-service hospital in Pine Township. That expansion will include four smaller neighborhood hospitals.

Renderings and video via UPMC.