The University of Nebraska Board of Regents will consider a more than $500 million increase to the cost of Project Health in Omaha due to an increase in inpatient capacity and construction costs, according to the agenda.
Project Health is an initiative to construct a new teaching hospital in Omaha for the University of Nebraska Medical Center and Nebraska Medicine. If approved, the scope of the project will go from costing $2.19 billion to $2.748 billion. The expanded plans will result in a roughly 1.5 million square-foot building. Initial plans showed more than 550 beds would be included in the building.
Officials have previously said that both public and private funding will pay for the project.
Since the project’s initial approval, several regents and university leaders have celebrated it as a step forward in health education.
In May, then-priority candidate and now-UNMC chancellor H. Dele Davies highlighted the project.
“Beyond the building, it’s also going to be an opportunity to innovate in how we care for patients, innovate in how we train the next generation of healthcare providers and innovate in terms of how we do clinical research, so that every single patient who comes here has an opportunity to be enrolled in a trial that could be life changing for them,” Davies said.
The regents are set to vote on the increase at their meeting on Oct. 9 at the University of Nebraska at Kearney Regional Engagement Center.