Prince George's regional hospital opens this week in Largo
A long-awaited regional hospital will open this week in Prince George’s County — a development that officials consider a vital step toward improving the health-care landscape in Maryland’s second-largest jurisdiction.
The University of Maryland Capital Region Medical Center, located near the Largo Town Center Metro station, originally was scheduled to open in 2017. But construction was delayed for years because of clashes about funding and the hospital’s size. The 620,000-square-foot, glass-paneled facility will replace the 75-year-old Prince George’s Hospital Center in Cheverly, which will transfer its patients this weekend.
A bevy of elected officials, including Gov. Larry Hogan (R) and County Executive Angela D. Alsobrooks (D), will attend a ribbon-cutting Tuesday to mark the opening of the hospital, the construction of which was made possible by more than $400 million in public funds from the county and the state.
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The facility, which is part of the University of Maryland Medical System’s network of 13 hospitals, has private rooms instead of the two-patient rooms at Cheverly, a bigger emergency room department, beds specifically reserved for children and a floor dedicated to cardiovascular care.
County officials are pushing for the hospital to anchor the creation of a bustling downtown Largo, where they are moving government buildings and actively recruiting businesses. They also want the hospital to compete with neighboring jurisdictions for top-flight medical talent, and to attract patients from Prince George’s who currently seek treatment outside the county.
“What the hospital means for Prince Georgians, from a health-care perspective and from an economic development perspective, is that it begins the healing process,” said Prince George’s County Council member Derrick Leon Davis (D-District 6). “There’s a sense of pride ... but also a sense that more is to come.”
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The project was for years a major source of tension between Hogan and Democrats — especially state lawmakers from Prince George’s — who pushed for state support and a bigger footprint. A commission whose members were appointed by Hogan ultimately approved 205 beds, fewer than what the hospital’s operating group sought and fewer than the 235 licensed beds at the hospital it is replacing in Cheverly.
The commission cited concerns that a bigger hospital would be expensive and unsustainable.
Many Democrats said that view didn't take into consideration the lack of medical infrastructure in Prince George’s, where residents disproportionately suffer from conditions such as heart disease and diabetes and there are far fewer physicians and hospital beds per capita than in neighboring jurisdictions. The county has 0.75 hospital beds per 1,000 residents, for example, compared to 1.47 in Montgomery County, 1.47 in Fairfax County and 3.42 in the District.
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Davis, who began pushing for a hospital in Largo when he was elected in 2011, said he still thinks the hospital should have more beds. He said he hopes that state officials support an expansion in coming years after seeing the toll of the coronavirus pandemic on the majority Black jurisdiction, which had the highest per capita case and death rates in the region.
“Nationwide, covid highlighted the fact that there are significant disparities in health care for Black and Brown Americans ... this hospital is going to be part of that recovery,” said former Prince George’s County executive Rushern L. Baker III (D), whose administration signed a memorandum of understanding with the University of Maryland Medical System in 2011 that led to the construction of the hospital.
Baker said he was “extremely frustrated” that delays meant the regional medical center was not open during the pandemic, especially when the surge in cases last spring meant some residents had to be sent outside the county for treatment and others were treated in medical tents.
Despite its smaller footprint, the hospital will be able to more efficiently serve residents than the facility in Cheverly, said Joseph L. Wright, the chief medical officer for Capital Region Health, because of its private rooms, modern design and new technology.
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Wright led a tour of the hospital with reporters last week that included light-filled rooms with views of gardens; a new heart and vascular institute; pediatric beds; and a rooftop with two helipads. Wright said the goal is to draw new patients from the county and create a network of care that prioritizes preventive medicine, in addition to taking care of people once they are sick.
Touring a spacious maternity delivery room overlooking a flower-filled garden, Wright talked about the high percentage of county residents who give birth at hospitals outside Prince George’s — a figure that Rand Corp. put at 85 percent for hospital-based births in 2017.
“We really, really want to deliver babies close to home,” Wright said. “And we know the aesthetic is important.”
He said the 16-bed cardiovascular unit, taken together with the institute the hospital launched last year, means physicians will be better able to address one of the leading causes of mortality in the county.
“The intent is getting ahead of the disease progression before they require heart surgery,” Wright said. “So many patients present to us in a state of severe disease progression.”
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