My wife has worked as a nurse at both UNC and Rex and UNC was a harder job.
Very sick patients from all over the state wind up there - people the local hospitals can’t handle, sometimes including tough cases like homeless people or prison inmates. They did good work but it was stressful, sometimes bordering on chaotic.
In contrast Rex does what they do very well, but focuses more on “routine” stuff, preferring to leave really complicated cases to bigger hospitals.
She hasn’t worked at either for about 10 years, so things may be different today, but at the time, the cooperation between the two facilities wasn’t very deep or broad. They were two separate entities under shared ownership, not two facilities of a cohesive system.
My wife worked at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP).
Having a world class, standalone Children’s facility like that near Raleigh is huge for the region. It means we can provide the absolute best care to NC’s newborns and children because it could attract some of the world’s best pediatric physicians that will be solving for the most complex conditions and needs.
“Goodnight CHONC” sounds more like the name of a particularly hefty squishmallow with pajamas and a TikTok account??
(Side note: I didn’t realize people could just rename threads even if it was made by someone else… slightly disturbing feature, but I like what you did there)
Maybe he’ll remain “anonymous” but then just tell everybody he was the “Anonymous” donor so he can enjoy the social credit boost of both donating a new children’s hospital AND not outwardly taking credit for it.
UNC Health released a video of UNC and Duke’s hospital CEOs and med school deans introducing the program to all current UNC affiliates. It’s unlisted for now, but I assume this will be publicly distributed when they start the press conference at 1:30pm.
Also, the official name of the hospital is NC Children’s Hospital - and they have a website now, showing that they’ll brand themselves as “NC Children’s” (instead of CHONC ).
There’s also a bit more new information from that site. We now know that the medical center will include:
An ambulatory care center (where you could do outpatient surgeries or overnight hospitalizations)
Space for hotels, restaurants etc. that are onsite (as opposed to offsite ones that UNC/Duke would assume would just get built)
Also, the biggest news is that this new complex would replace the existing children’s hospitals at UNC and Duke when they open their doors. This also implies immediate new space for cranes to go up in Chapel Hill and Durham, too, once this opens up new spaces for adult hospital expansions.
Population growth will keep moving east so I will laugh if the site is in Durham County. I’m sure Durham leadership will try to sway this project into Durham County.
My thought exactly. The location criteria is written like it is meant for Wake County. I suspect that the Triangle center of population has been marching east for 50+ years now and it will continue to move deeper into Wake over time.
Edwards Mill – state-owned land that’s potentially free, proximity to UNC Rex at least makes it simpler to recruit staff who’ve optimized their commutes for that location.
SAS campus – premier location, considerable excess land (though the Harrison-adjacent site is only ~50 acres, there’s much more further back), SAS IPO in 2025 means SAS itself is likely built out and Goodnight has a capital event.
RTP – between RTF and Alexandria REIT there’s ample land, enthusiasm about having a clinical anchor, and capability to deliver a turnkey project, but it depends on a yet-to-be-finalized rezoning to unlock both buildable square footage and ability to have on-campus ancillary commercial.
Lake Crabtree Park – correct size and location, but RDU Authority can’t execute a below-market sale or lease.
“UNC Health and Duke University Health System will transfer all pediatric-related clinical services, programs & operations to NC Children’s.” → the existing 150-bed UNC and 202-bed Duke children’s hospitals probably can’t just be converted to adult pavilions without going through the Certificate of Need process? Or maybe they can; the law governing CON only says “acute care beds,” so once they’re licensed I think they’re fine. Which makes building a new statewide facility a very odd way for UNC and Duke to get the additional beds they’ve been pining for.
I don’t think UNC and Duke would need to tear down their current children’s bedtowers, but I imagine that it would be a great excuse to do so.
For UNC, the Memorial Hospital, Anderson bedtower etc. are the home of important surgical rooms, catheter labs etc. that are also used by other parts of the hospital (Children’s, Women’s, and Neuroscience hospitals, as well as the Cancer Center). They’re also one of the oldest, ugliest, and hardest-to-navigate buildings in the entire med school campus. So bad, in fact, that the recently-opened surgical tower is designed to hide it away from the front facade of UNC Medical Center. So a teardown of the current pediatric bedtower lets them build something new for what that Memorial currently does, then finally replace those aging buildings and making room for it to better connect with the rest of the UNC campus.
I’m not as familiar with Duke’s situation and it’s been a while since I’ve seen it from the inside. With that said, I’m sure they would be happy to use the eventually-vacant space to renovate or replace Duke North.
I think that’s true. For example, UNC’s new surgical center is marketed as the home of new operating rooms and inpatient beds, but it turns out that project was actually a replacement of beds and surgical rooms. This is how they got an exemption from CON laws in 2017 (and even after some scope changes, this decision was affirmed in 2020). A true addition of beds would be tough - but a lot would need to happen in the next 15 years, before the new children’s hospital is completed and anything like that could seriously get started.
This is what the Children’s Hospital website says about existing facilities at Duke and UNC:
“Both hospital campuses are currently experiencing space constraints, and we do not anticipate that changing. We anticipate that both UNC Health and Duke Health will have plans to backfill the space that will be vacated when the pediatric service line moves to the new NC Children’s campus.”
Yeah, that tells us that UNC and Duke will do something with the space that would get opened up. I think the question @Spero, @paytonc, and I have is more about what that entails.
Will the new vacancies lead to things getting torn down and rebuilt, leading to UNC/Duke getting more inpatient beds in their main medical centers? Or will the new uses for those spaces just involve existing beds being shuffled around? Our questions are a subtle distinction from what you’re asking, but there’s real meaning to it.
There’s tons of undeveloped space still near the Wake/Johnston county lines. The 540 tollway will be running very close to some areas where those counties border one another. In fact, 540 will be crossing over Business 70 in Clayton/Garner which is very close to the Wake/Johnston county line, and this just about 3 miles from I-40 This is obviously a high-growth area and could be on the table, I should think. This will be fun to follow. We’ll see!
Johnston County is too far east especially since this is to serve all of NC and I think it will be located between I-440 and I-885 off I-40. Maybe SAS campus property or maybe on some of the airport owned land.
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