The Hartford Courant
March 9, 2010

"Gov. M. Jodi Rell today announced plans for the future of John Dempsey Hospital, calling for a $352 million project that would renovate the UConn Health Center, build a new patient tower for its Dempsey Hospital, and fund collaborative programs at other area hospitals.

"Rell described the "UConn Health Network" as a way to create up to 5,000 jobs, advance health care in the region, and bring the UConn medical school to top-tier status."

The plan calls for $236 million for a new patient tower at Dempsey and $96 million to renovate the academic and research space on the university's Farmington campus.

It also calls for $20 million to create initiatives, some of which involve other area hospitals, including a regional primary care institute at St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford and a simulation center at Hartford Hospital.

The money would come from $227 million in state bonding, $25 million from previously approved UConn 21st Century funding, and $100 million in federal funds. The federal money is anticipated to come from the $100 million U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd got inserted into the Senate health care reform bill.

Other parts of the plan include:

•Developing a nationally recognized cancer center on the Farmington campus, with an eye toward earning designation as a Comprehensive Cancer Center.

•Transferring the neonatal intensive care unit to Connecticut Children's Medical Center. The unit would remain in Farmington but would be run by the children's hospital.

•Creating a health disparities institute in Hartford to promote health care research, training, and delivery to minority communities.

•Developing a bioscience enterprise zone that would offer state tax breaks to private companies that create jobs and work with the hospital partners in the UConn Health Network.

•Fostering an institute for clinical and translational sciences designed to expand access to clinical trials.

Rell's proposal follows years of debates about the future of the UConn Health Center, which includes Dempsey Hospital, research laboratories, and the university's medical and dental schools.

UConn officials say Dempsey, which has 224 beds, is too small and outdated to be financially viable and hinders the university's ability to recruit faculty or bring the medical school to top-tier status.

UConn previously proposed building a new, larger hospital to replace Dempsey on the Farmington campus, but other area hospitals opposed the plan, which ultimately failed.

Last year, the university proposed a partnership with Hartford Hospital that called for merging the hospitals into a two-campus "University Hospital" system. The plan also called for a new hospital, to be built with state money. St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center, Bristol Hospital and the health center's unions opposed the proposal, as did Rell, who argued that it was too costly. UConn officials scrapped the plan late last year after determining that it could not win the necessary support to move forward.