Indiana University Health Methodist Hospital. IBJ file photo
Indiana University Health plans to demolish the vast majority of Methodist Hospital after the health system opens its new, $4.3 billion downtown hospital just a block away in 2027, a senior executive said Wednesday.
“There will be some buildings that are historic that will remain,” said Dr. Ryan Nagy, president of IU Health’s adult academic health center, which includes Methodist and University hospitals. He did not specify which buildings would survive.
Methodist Hospital was built in another age—before penicillin, insulin, organ transplants or open-heart surgery. When the hospital opened its doors in 1908, Theodore Roosevelt was in the White House.
Today, Methodist Hospital is a hodgepodge of buildings stemming from the the intersection of 16th Street and North Capitol Avenue that have been stitched together over the decades, with mismatched floor plates, uneven ceilings and a conglomeration of electrical, mechanical and plumbing systems.
“If I were to take you on a tour of the buildings currently, they’ve served us well, but there are components of Methodist that, literally, the engineering is out of the Civil War,” Nagy said.
He said IU Health officials have studied the current Methodist buildings for different possible uses, including administrative offices and clinics.
“We’ve looked at every angle,” Nagy said Wednesday morning in a fireside chat at IBJ’s Health Care & Benefits Power Breakfast at the Westin Indianapolis. “Could we use that for other components of the enterprise? And it doesn’t make much sense.”
One exception, he said, is to keep one newer building of the Methodist campus furnished with 140 beds and additional operating rooms, in case the new hospital unexpectedly runs short of space.
“We’ll keep that functional but mothballed,” Nagy said. “Think of it as your life raft.”
The new hospital will have three patient towers that each rise 16 floors. Altogether, it will contain 864 beds and 50 operating rooms.
Nagy said IU Health made a decision in 2022 to put in a foundation for a fourth tower, in case demand scales up and warrants hundreds more beds.
The new hospital, which has yet to be named, will stretch across a 40-acre site just south of Methodist Hospital. Construction is still underway, with patients set to move in near the end of 2027.
The new hospital will consolidate the existing Methodist Hospital and University Hospital, located about 1.5 miles to the southwest on the IU Indianapolis campus. The eight-block expansion will extend IU Health’s footprint south to 12th Street and from Capital Avenue to Interstate 65.
The complex will include a medical office building, a support building that will contain parking, a utility plant and retail space. It will also be home to the Indiana University School of Medicine’s education and research building.
Dennis Murphy, CEO of IU Health, told the Economic Club of Indiana earlier this year that the new hospital will save $50 million a year in heating, lighting and other operational costs, compared with the two existing downtown hospitals. It will also treat some of the sickest patients in the state, he said.
“That’s why this hospital is really an investment in the health of Hoosiers,” Murphy told the Economic Club audience. “It’s how we continue to bring health to the state. And I think we are the only organization in the state who can take care of the truly complex and the sick.”
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