The ceremonial groundbreaking Tuesday for the new IU Health Hospital and IU Regional Academic Health Center was about much more than the beginning of a construction project.
Yes, the new buildings will be impressive, attractive and state-of-the-art when they are completed in 2020. But the work they will house, the opportunities they will create and the value they will provide literally millions of people were at the center of the event in the Henke Hall of Champions on the IU campus.
Speakers, starting with Indiana University President Michael McRobbie, emphasized the enormous and longterm potential for good represented by the groundbreaking celebration.
McRobbie talked about the “virtuous cycle” this project will deliver — educating the next generation of health professionals, allowing for cutting-edge health sciences research and providing second-to-none clinical services for patients.
This project, which more than one speaker called transformational, has multiple levels of potential and promise. Research that leads to scientific breakthrough, education that fully prepares medical professionals and improving and saving lives are three vital ones for sure.
There are others.
The health care campus will be a magnet for bringing students in many health-related disciplines to our community and state. The new hospital and adjacent academic center also will entice health professionals to Monroe County who may not have considered coming to the outdated IU Health Bloomington Hospital facility on West Second Street. Dr. Brechin Newby, president of the IU Health Bloomington Hospital medical staff, put it well when she said: “The best of the best will want to be a part of this.”
Bloomington Mayor John Hamilton called this project the largest single economic development investment in the city’s history, though he noted correctly that health care transcends economics. That said, the project will have a direct economic effect by creating jobs as well as an indirect effect by sparking development in the vicinity of the new hospital and academic center.
In another thought related to economic development, IU Health Hospital Board President Lynn Coyne, who also serves as president of the Bloomington Economic Development Corp., said while having a hospital is central to a community, the plans for this hospital and regional academic health center will distinguish Bloomington “well beyond other communities.” That competitive advantage will help attract businesses that might have chosen to go elsewhere.
IU Health leaders Dennis Murphy and Matt Bailey stressed the benefits of a new “model of care” as well as the presence of the center as a catalyst for health and wellness, starting with plans for walking trails to be on the property. Murphy, IU Health president and CEO, summed up the vision nicely by saying most important to him was the facility’s role as “a destination for healing, a community hub and a center for care and hope.”
The new facility should also help the state of Indiana address an important issue — the shortage of qualified health care workers. The net benefit of that will be higher quality and more comprehensive health care for all Hoosiers.
The groundbreaking included shovels digging into a box of dirt. Soon, however, the soil will begin to move with purpose on the construction of about 735,000 square feet of space in the hospital and academic building. The buildings should be done in a little over two years, which is when the next level of work will begin — improving education, research and clinical services for this very important goal stated by President McRobbie:
“Improving the health and well-being of the people of Bloomington, of this region, of Indiana and beyond.”
The men and women who have driven the project this far deserve our thanks for putting that superb goal within reach.