Changing Medicine

on Campus

University of Iowa Health Care’s visionary plans include remodeling and expanding facilities that will enhance our leadership in academic medicine and help us fulfill our mission of changing medicine, changing lives.

At its heart are a series of carefully planned initiatives over the next decade designed to promote better patient care, support growth in research, and enrich our educational agenda. Due to the national economic outlook and uncertainty regarding national health care policy, planning for these projects is continuing but with an extended timeline.

Included among these is a new outpatient facility in nearby Coralville, convenient yet remote from the congested main campus. In addition to its patient-focused design, the new facility will also support our missions of research and education.

To continue to improve the delivery of patient-centered care, the UI Health Care leadership team plans to modernize and expand the Hospital’s operating room suites and service areas. Another objective—consolidating our pediatric services—is the impetus behind planning a UI Children’s Hospital wing that will connect to renovated facilities. Also, to enhance quality of care and respond to patient preference, an addition is planned that will increase the number of private rooms hospital-wide. This project will also provide additional suites to house the complex modern equipment required for sophisticated surgery and treatment.

We hope that, within the next year, on-campus construction will begin on a significant new UI research facility, the University of Iowa Institute for Biomedical Discovery. This building, which was approved two years ago by the Board of Regents and received a $30 million appropriation from the Iowa General Assembly, will extend south from the Carver Biomedical Research Building toward the Bowen Science Building. The 200,000 square feet of new space will be dedicated to the kind of high-risk, high-reward research that will find cures for perplexing and complex illnesses that affect Iowans, as well as others around the world.

Among the major research programs led by investigators from across the UI campus will be heart and vascular, cancer, neurosciences, regenerative medicine, diabetes, and informatics. The generous support of donors and friends from all over the world will help make these plans a reality. For example, the University of Iowa Institute for Biomedical Discovery will be funded through a partnership of state, federal, University, and private commitments–commitments based on the shared belief that Iowa deserves a world-class health care enterprise with world-class practitioners, researchers, and facilities.

We are all united in the effort to change the future of health care. We are all partners in changing medicine, changing lives.