Second part of four-part Diagnosis: Columbus, looking at expansion projects across central Ohio’s major health systems as they respond to the region’s population growth and job expansion. Read the first part — on OhioHealth’s $1 billion expansion — by clicking here.
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — It’s not just a clever or convenient name: Nationwide Children’s Hospital is building a truly national profile. In 2024, Nationwide Children’s Hospital had nearly 1.8 million patient visits from all 50 states and 44 countries.
“We are, in fact, a nationwide children’s hospital and the reason we pursue that is not because we want to be nationwide, but because we want to attract the specialists who need patient populations,” Nationwide Children’s Hospital’s Senior Vice President of Strategic and Facilities Planning Patty McClimon said.
McClimon has worked at the hospital for her entire career, spanning more than three decades. For most of that time, the hospital campus has been a constant construction zone.
“We’re not building buildings to build buildings,” she said. “What we found was that our campus was so old that the ability to retrofit spaces into today’s technology didn’t exist.”
That led to the biggest investment in the hospital’s history: a 14-story tower for acute care. It’s projected to cost $1.27 billion and will be constructed as a fraternal twin of the existing tower which is now a decade old. The new building is expected to be completed in 2028.
“It’s been great to think about the building as a twin and we can really look at what’s working well in the existing building and what are the little things that we could tweak to make it better,” Nationwide Children’s Hospital Manager of Design and Construction Ed Cheshire said.
The new building will house the hospital’s most ill patients. Services will include emergency and critical care, oncology, a three-floor neonatal intensive care unit, and expanded surgical space. Once the project is complete, more than 430 new beds will be housed there.
The new tower will merge into some of the existing facilities in the current building, most notably the emergency department.
“We want the look and feel to be seamless as you go from the old to the new,” Chesire said. “I don’t want there to be haves and have-nots. So that building, I want staff to be comfortable working in either side of that line. We learn not only from what we’ve built but what other children’s hospitals have built, so we’re out there talking and communicating, really thinking about best practices about what we’re building and how.”
The tower will further enhance the massive, vertical growth of Nationwide Children’s campus and will become a significant part of the Columbus skyline as drivers move along Interstate 70 in Downtown Columbus.
“We’re very proud of the fact that we’ve impacted the skyline, but we’re most proud of the fact that we are making children into healthy, healthy adults,” McClimon said.