University of Iowa Health Care celebrates ‘gorgeous new cutting-edge facility’ in North Liberty

NORTH LIBERTY — Promising groundbreaking innovation and the highest quality care this region has to offer, University of Iowa Health Care on Friday kicked off a weekend introducing its new orthopedics and sports medicine hospital to a booming North Liberty with lawmakers, regents, community leaders and university executives touring the “gorgeous new cutting-edge facility.”

“This facility offers a new level of comprehensive orthopedic care that has not previously been available in the state,” UI Vice President for Medical Affairs Denise Jamieson told a standing-room-only crowd for a ribbon-cutting. “I'm going to say that again, because I think it's the most important thing that we can say today: This facility offers a new level of comprehensive orthopedic care that has not previously been available in the state.”

The five-story, 469,060-square-foot campus — debuting a new home for the UI Department of Orthopedics, which long has been relegated to a windowless basement of the main UIHC campus — features 36 inpatient beds, 84 clinic exam rooms, 14 emergency rooms, 12 operating rooms and two procedure rooms.

It has a Level 4 emergency room, 24-hour drive-through pharmacy, physical therapy area with expansive indoor/outdoor spaces and extensive diagnostic imaging.

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“The thing that's great about our imaging is that while we're an orthopedic-focused hospital, our (emergency department), imaging and clinical pathology services are available to the whole community,” UI Associate Chief Nursing Officer Emily Ward said.

“So if your doctor orders you to have, say, a CT scan of your abdomen, you could come here to have that done. If you get regular lab draws because of a medication that you're on, you could come here and have those done. So it’s creating more availability to the community for those services.”

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‘Positioned to grow’

Following Friday’s ribbon-cutting, the public is invited Saturday to step inside the finished product of the massive construction endeavor many have seen evolving for years on a long-vacant 60 acres at the intersection of Highway 965 and Forevergreen Road.

The 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. open house will feature tours, a 10:15 a.m. fitness class with Hot House Yoga, a meet-and-greet with Hawkeye athletes, food trucks, STEM activities for kids, face painting, giveaways, along with access to a rock-climbing wall, pickleball, mini golf and other challenges.

The official opening on April 28 is a long time coming — after hospital officials first introduced plans for the hospital in 2020 in an application for a required “certificate of need” issued by a state panel.

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That application suggested the new hospital would be used primarily for clinical care in orthopedics, gastroenterology and urology — all service lines seen as “uniquely positioned to grow their research and education.” Of the 36 inpatient beds it planned for the site, 28 to 32 would be dedicated to orthopedics, according to the 2020 application, with just a handful for urology and gastroenterology.

That proposal sparked ire among community hospitals and providers — many of whom wrote the state urging it to deny the application, accusing the university of veering out of its tertiary and quaternary lane and threatening the survival of community providers.

Hearing those concerns, state health facility officials rejected the application to build — compelling UIHC to come back with a revised request that removed references to orthopedics and stressed its need to expand access to care for Iowa’s sickest and most complex patients.

State health officials approved that second application in September 2021 and the university broke ground weeks later on what it initially cast as a $395 million project. Not even a year into its four-year construction timetable, the university returned to the Board of Regents seeking approval to increase its project budget 33 percent to more than $525 million.

Citing “multiple convergent construction industry challenges, such as worldwide and local construction market inflation, higher raw material prices, limited availability of construction materials, and local construction trade labor shortages,” UIHC officials at that time told the board the new price tag was a “worst-case scenario.”

“When we realize those bids in roughly a month from now, we'll know where we stand and that will allow us to assess and come back to the Board of Regents with the results and, hopefully, a revised downward budget,” UI Senior Vice President for Finance and Operations Rod Lehnertz said then.

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In celebrating the project’s completion Friday, UI President Barbara Wilson — although she didn’t provide specifics — said, “We brought this building in on time and under budget … that doesn't happen very often, especially these days.”

The university’s new orthopedic hospital joins a new Steindler Orthopedic clinic and ambulatory surgery center about 2 miles west along Forevergreen Road — creating a health care, and orthopedic-specific, hub in the growing North Liberty-Tiffin region.

Larry Marsh, longtime chair of the UI Department of Orthopedics, said that while the university has “always been the center in the state that takes care of the most complex problems, the most challenging patients, the referrals of complications from elsewhere” this new facility will allow the department to expand.

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“This facility, this parking, these clinics, that physical therapy down there at the end, walk-in injury clinics — all of these things allow us to expand our care to a wider range of population,” Marsh said. “That is really challenging when you're in the basement of a tertiary care center with the parking and the challenges.”

The intention with “this premier orthopedic center” is to offer a “one stop coordinated care for orthopedic patients,” he said.

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com