The Triangle is set to become the home of a new North Carolina Children’s Hospital, a major children’s hospital that will become its own institution instead of a part of the UNC Medical Center! We’ve known about this since 2023, but we now have some more details on this.
As of this morning, we now know from Axios that Duke and UNC will partner together to make this medical center happen! This would be a new structure for the Triangle as well as for flagship pediatric hospitals, but it’s a structure that has worked for adult hospitals like Cornell and Columbia’s joint use of New York Presbytarian. It also implies that it would be a separate institution, though we won’t know much more about administrative details until a press conference on this scheduled for tomorrow.
We know that UNC wants to get this complex running by the mid-2030s, so this should be another fascinating development and resource for the Triangle - and hopefully, the entire United States!
Healthcare facilities (like many industries) benefit from agglomeration. Given that UNC already has a massive facility in Rex, and that there is a huge ecosystem of healthcare facilities nearby, and that there is also a large amount of land nearby as well - this seems the obvious contender (to me) rather than trying to bootstrap a new healthcare epicenter as a greenfield development somewhere up by RTP.
As far as being near the center: I would guess that the center of population for the Triangle is closer to West Raleigh than it is to RTP.
I could make a strong argument that western Wake County is the center of the Triangle. If we looked for the population center, then it’s probably more eastern than that.
I’d think that they’d want to be near 40 and the airport for best access by air and car from all over the state. Ideally it would be near a current or future rail station as well.
How many acres is RDU trying to develop adjacent to Lake Crabtree Park? I don’t know about others, but being adjacent to a park would be a nice resource for kids being treated at the hospital and for their families.
Does Duke, Chapel Hill, Durham, and UNC Chapel Hill feel the same or do they want this on their side of the Triangel. As in this project is to Durham’s enrichment primarily.
Saying that in the perspective that this board is for the promotion of downtown Raleigh and this project doesn’t seem like it will benefit this narrow interest.
Of course a new children’s hospital is great no matter where.
Ehh… this assumes that UNC spreads out its research infrastructure beyond the main hospital, but that’s not really what happens.
I’m in UNC’s Biomedical Engineering program and have done clinical studies for a new medical device as a part of my doctoral dissertation - and almost all of our work takes place in the main hospital. There’s a few cases where we go to outpatient facilities, but even in that extreme situation, it’s never made sense to move our fragile equipment by more than a few miles. So it’s strange at best (and absurd at worst) to think of going all the way to Rex to do clinical demonstrations when the main hospital works great.
Click here for some more context about clinical research for medical innovations.
My lab only does feasibility studies of medical devices with the hope that medtech companies will be convinced enough to take our technologies through the process of making it into a product - and medical devices only need to go through rigorous multi-center clinical trials if they’re classified to be high-risk. This is why single-center clinical studies are “enough” for us - and we’re not really incentivized to go beyond the hospital that’s physically connected to our campus.
Sure, the flip side of that is true too: if we were working on:
a more mature technology, and/or;
we’re developing drugs or biologics,
then we’d need to do more expansive studies that involve more people, more doctors, and more hospitals. But at that point, you’d be doing a multi-center study. You’re probably contracting with a contract research organization like IQVIA at that point, and you might as well try to test out your creations in different places around the world instead of just the Triangle. After all, medical journals, the FDA, hospital, insurers etc. prefer that your technology doesn’t have a geographic bias in terms of whether they work or not.
Either way,…
From the perspective of a medical devices developer within UNC, there’s no real, practical reason to favor Rex over a greenfield site. Maybe there’s some benefit to be gained for practicing clinicians/nurses and existing Rex staff, but I imagine it’s not as dramatic as you’d expect.
That’s one thing that I think we’ll find out in tomorrow’s press release. But I think your point about whether UNC can serve Durham’s medical needs is more relevant in UNC and Duke’s turf war over the former’s proposed hospital in the Durham side of RTP. As long as this hospital isn’t built somewhere crazy inconvenient for the western part of the Triangle (e.g. not in Garner or Wake Forest or something), I’m sure that there’s ways that a Raleigh or Cary location could be just as attractive.
I’m a big fan of the wait-and-see approach on stuff like this because I d on t think speculation really does much good and the decision is going to be made completely independent from the conversation. But I’m dropping in to note that there are a whole host of issues that drive feasibility for site selection like this, eg electrical capacity, water, etc… that it’s not as easy as finding a big piece of land. And I’d guess that the land itself would be something already owned by one of the involved entities to account for acquisition costs and development issues unless there’s some sort of boondoggle in the works
If Goodnight is involved… that probably tells us where it’s going.
There’s about 75 acres, more-or-less undeveloped, owned by Reedy Creek Investments (AKA Jim Goodnight) along Harrison Avenue across from Weston Parkway, between SAS and Cary Academy.
And of course several hundred more in the vicinity, largely near the Trinity/Trenton intersection.
Of course way back when, 20-odd years ago, Cary was planning an extension of Cary Parkway to connect to Trinity Road, until the Goodnights told them to back off (as they own much of the land it would need to pass through.)
God I hope so! I’m 100% in favor of this just for the name alone. LOL
As someone who lives off of Trinity, this would’ve been super convenient. I remember a long time ago trying to avoid accident-closed I-40 during rush hour, and Google Maps routed me into SAS as a shortcut because it seemed like it should connect. Awkward moment for me…
I suppose this comes down to the question of which is the tail and which is the dog for this hospital: healthcare, or research?
When I reference healthcare “agglomeration” I refer to the ancillary facilities nearby that are related to healthcare, but not directly connected to the hospital. All the offices for specialists and subspecialists. The pharmacies, physical therapists, rehab facilities, urgent care, etc. All these things locate near hospitals for a reason: it’s efficient! Locating near an existing such cluster, and in fact reinforcing it, results in overall higher efficiencies at delivering services and providing healthcare.
When I say “near Rex” I dont necessarily mean “physically connected to Rex”. There’s a lot of undeveloped land betwen Edwards Mill and Blue Ridge - perhaps somewhere over there. They recently built and opened the cancer hospital over there, for example. Maybe a sky bridge to link with Rex; maybe not. But proximity to an existing hospital/healthcare cluster is definitely a benefit.
I’m assuming that this hospital will be a teaching hospital for both Carolina and Duke - which, then, implies to me that both healthcare and research (i.e. both halves of medical education) would be similarly prioritized. Even if it’s more of a 60-40 split that favors healthcare, there would still be tradeoffs and compromises involved to balance things out.
It’s obviously super beneficial (and convenient!) to have all the care you need under one roof - at least for patients, infrastructure, and certain equipment needs. For beds and specialist services, though, I still don’t know if there’s so much synergy there to the point where it’d be better to be a neighbor to Rex versus the SAS campus, for example (especially with certain parts of the hospital admin world fragmenting more and more, these days).
Also, I can only speak to this anecdotally and through generic vibes , but I got the impression from several practitioners and staff that Rex is kind of like UNC Health’s ugly stepchild. Not sure how valid or pervasive this is, but I’d be curious about how (if at all) this dynamic will get involved.
Either way, I don’t doubt your argument. All I mean is that I think adjacency to existing hospitals are more of a nice-to-have than a deal-making benefit.
If the hospital goes the SAS property, that’s a reasonable “center of Triangle” location that’s still closer to Chapel Hill on the west that it is to Clayton on the east.
Did some stuff with census data and Python, and it turns out that the weighted center of population for the nine-county Raleigh Durham Cary CSA, as of the 2020 census, is inside the footprint of the I-40/Wade interchange.
Entertainingly, this almost the exact midpoint of a line between Rex Hospital and the rumored SAS site.
Can post code/data if you care but if not just take my word for it.
Did this analysis using tract-level data but I doubt it would change much if I went down to block level (as the overall boundary of the nine-country CSA would not change.)
vibes 