IU Health aims to transform health care with $1B medical center

Indiana University Health will invest $1 billion in a new medical center at 16th Street and Capitol Avenue, part of a massive project that will tear down century-old buildings and erect new ones as it aims to transform local health care and its own future.

Responding to changing needs, the new medical campus will have fewer beds than IU Health's two Downtown facilities — Methodist and University hospitals — as it reflects a shift to more outpatient care. It will include a medical education building for greater collaboration between the Indiana University School of Medicine and IU Health.

The site also will serve as a locus for specialty, complicated care for patients from throughout the IU Health hospital system, which has multiple sites around the state. And as part of the transformation, maternity services will be moved close to or inside Riley Hospital for Children.

"This is a gigantic project ... a major public works," Daniel Evans, president and chief executive officer of IU Health, said Friday, comparing it to the construction of Lucas Oil Stadium or the new Indianapolis International Airport.

IU Health officials have been pondering how to move into the future with its two aging adult Downtown hospitals for months. They wanted to make the most of the space while addressing changing realities in health care that have shifted numbers from inpatient to outpatient care.

The two Downtown hospitals' inpatient censuses have been declining since 1964, as health care has shifted more emphasis to shorter stays and ambulatory procedures. Together Methodist and University have about 1,200 beds. On any given day, however, only about 850 of them are used.

It is not yet known how many beds the new campus will have. But numbers will go even lower in the future, as health reform places a new emphasis on preventive outpatient care to lower health-care costs. So IU Health officials are approaching this project with a new model for medicine in mind.

"We understood that this was going to be our home ... for the next 100 years plus," said Jonathan Curtright, chief operating officer of IU Health Methodist and University Hospitals.

The result, which will take at least five to seven years to bring to fruition, may look vastly different than what's currently standing, IU Health officials say. There will be a 30 to 40 percent decrease in the center's footprint, going from about 4.2 million square feet between the two hospitals to 2.5 or so million square feet, Curtright said.

Some of the newer buildings in the area, such as the Neuroscience Center, which opened three years ago will remain intact. Several other buildings, however, will fall victim to the wrecking ball.

"You can expect any building that's 100 years old to be gone and we have a bunch of them," said Evans, who himself was born at Methodist.

The future of other buildings, however, is not as certain, though IU Health officials say they do not expect to lose any jobs in the process, since outpatient care will grow as inpatient care shrinks.

University Hospital, IU Health's other adult facility, began as Long Hospital more than 100 years ago. Today it is home to the state's largest organ transplant program.

At this time, nothing has been decided about that building's fate. For now, patients will be seen there for the foreseeable future and it could one day become a post-acute care hospital and/or rehabilitation site, IU Health officials said.

The IU Health Simon Cancer Center could also see some changes. Opened six years ago, the building serves as home to researchers and practicing physicians. But it sits more than a half mile from where the new medical center will be, raising questions about whether a move is in store.

Both IU Health officials, who oversee the cancer center's clinical services, and IUSM officials, under whose aegis research activity occurs, say that's still under discussion.

No matter what, said Dr. Jay Hess, IUSM dean and vice president for IU Clinical Affairs: "There will always be an IU Simon Cancer Center."

Riley Hospital for Children, located about a mile and a half from where the new campus will be located, will become home to maternity services. That could entail new construction or using shell space in the Simon Family Tower, which opened about two years ago.

No matter where patients in the new center go, new signage and better access will greet them, Evans said. The two current hospitals are each a warren of cobbled-together buildings that make just getting to the right clinic a challenge.

"The thought here is patient-centricity, way-finding, all of which are challenged in these older buildings," Evans said. "Our hope is to build a building that is the future of health care."

The new center will also allow IUSM, which just reclaimed its title of largest medical school in the nation by enrollment, to upgrade its facilities, many of which are more than half a century old. Medical schools today start students sooner in clinical education, making proximity to a hospital key, Hess said.

All of these plans rest on the assumption that no major changes rock health care in the coming months, IU Health officials acknowledge. Drastic cuts to medical education could have an impact. If the Supreme Court decides that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional this June, that could also lead IU Health to rethink their plans, Evans said.

Still, Evans said that IU Health will remain focused on ways to improve clinical care, research, and education moving into the future.

"The market continues to be dynamic. The difficulty here is predicting the future, so one of the reasons we think this is going to take three, four, five six years, is that things will happen to change our estimates of the ambulatory vs. in-patient mix," he said. "The organic thing is we are committed with the school to this new site, we're committed to building a tripartite mission that's best in the country."

And the name of the new site, known for now as the Academic Health Center?

That remains up to a task force to determine, Evans said.

Call Star reporter Shari Rudavsky at (317) 444-6354. Follow her on Twitter: @srudavsky.