UK buying site on I-75 for an additional hospital and other facilities

By Al Cross Published June 19, 2022 HEALTH BUSINESS

The University of Kentucky announced Friday morning that it plans to buy about 27 acres at Winchester Road and Interstate 75 in southeast Lexington for an additional hospital. The UK Board of Trustees approved the $20.3 million purchase agreement that afternoon.

A UK news release said “The property is anticipated to be a future home for a medical campus that could include a regional hospital facility, a medical office building and/or other clinical facilities.” The property adjoins the new Baptist Health Lexington campus that is under construction.

Dr. Mark Newman, UK’s executive vice president for health affairs, “was asked about potential competition between the two facilities” at a meeting of the trustees’ health-care committee, the Lexington Herald-Leader reports. “Newman said the two hospitals will have different focuses, with Baptist more focused on cancer treatment and UK focused on short-term and outpatient care, reducing competition between the two. . . . The new facility will increase capacity for UK HealthCare, allowing some shorter-term patients to move from the Chandler Medical Center. That will in turn open up space for patients in need of longer-term care from Chandler, Newman said.”

Newman said in the news release, “We recognize the need to make health care more geographically accessible for our patients in Lexington as well as across Central and Eastern Kentucky. Not only will this location be more convenient for many of our patients, it will support our continued growth in outpatient services and create more capacity for essential clinical programs.”

UK HealthCare offers outpatient services at Albert B. Chandler Hospital, Kentucky Children’s Hospital and pediatric clinics, Good Samaritan Professional Arts Center, the Lexington Surgery Center and other facilities at Turfland, the Polk-Dalton Clinic, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Cardinal Hill Rehabilitation Hospital, and the Lucille Parker Markey Cancer Center, which will be moving to a new building across South Limestone Street from Chandler Hospital. It also operates Good Samaritan Hospital, which it classifies as an inpatient facility.