By HFT Staff

Novant Health’s board of trustees has approved construction plans to launch the healthcare infrastructure needed to meet the Wilmington region’s needs for decades to come. 

The approval supports the master facility plan for Novant Health New Hanover Regional Medical Center. This vision will augment clinical care and improve the healthcare landscape in New Hanover County. 

The plan includes a new heart and vascular patient tower at New Hanover’s South 17th Street campus, a major outpatient services expansion for heart and vascular care, a new physical rehabilitation hospital that will nearly double capacity and improvements to reconfigure two floors of New Hanover Regional Medical Center to boost access to care.  

Cost estimates for the projects are upwards of $1 billion over a 5–7-year period. The plans come as southeastern North Carolina continues to experience rapid population growth. Demand for diagnostic, inpatient and outpatient cardiovascular care is already high, with the Novant Health Heart & Vascular Institute (HVI) seeing 18,000 new patients this year in the Coastal Region. Collectively, the HVI team completes more than 120,000 outpatient clinic visits each year, along with more than 12,500 surgeries and procedures. 

The patient tower will include inpatient beds, surgical spaces for minimally invasive and complex surgical procedures, cardiac catheterization labs for diagnostic and therapeutic procedures and electrophysiology labs. Consolidating all inpatient and surgical heart and vascular care in one facility ensures an optimal patient experience while also offering a smooth workflow and efficiency for care teams. 

Additionally, Novant Health will add a second, 80,000-square-foot heart and vascular medical office building in Wilmington to dramatically increase access to outpatient services beyond the current facility on Physicians Drive. 

The new patient tower would be built in place of the Novant Health New Hanover Rehabilitation Hospital on the South 17th Street campus. 

Meanwhile, to meet growing demand for inpatient rehabilitation services, Novant Health will build a new, modern rehabilitation hospital with 60 private rooms. This new facility will be constructed on the 15-acre Wrightsville Avenue campus that also hosts the Novant Health New Hanover Orthopedic Hospital. 

As part of the master plans, the ground and first floors of New Hanover Regional Medical Center will be reconfigured to optimize clinical space, supporting expansions in needed areas such as endoscopy and surgical services. 

The large-scale project will be advanced in a phased approach over five to six years, and current plans call for the heart and vascular tower to open by 2031. Novant Health will seek state review and approval, as needed, under the certificate of need law.