$1.8 Billion Hospital Planned in Stockholm

STOCKHOLM — Sweden’s capital city will become home to the country’s largest public-private partnership healthcare project in healthcare with construction of the New Karolinska Solna University Hospital in Solna – a care and research facility that is being funded and operated in a private-public partnership between a Swedish construction and healthcare management firm and a British fund.

 

The Stockholm County Council Assembly awarded a contract earlier this year to build the NKS Hospital international construction firm Skanska, with offices throughout Sweden. The 3.6 million square-foot hospital will replace the existing Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm.

 

The $1.8 billion project is being funded through a public-private partnership with Swedish Hospital Partners, a joint venture between Skanska and British investment fund, Innisfree, according to reports. Innisfree utilizes capital from institutional investors based in Sweden, Germany, Canada, Japan, and the United States. SHP’s contract includes financing, building, development, maintenance and operation of the hospital, which will be run by Skanska’s standalone healthcare division.

 

Construction is scheduled to begin this summer on the project, which took nearly 10 years to plan.

The Stockholm-based architectural firm Tengbom Gruppen designed the facility based on a concept created by sustainable designer,White arkitekture, also of Stockholm. 

 

Plans call for 600 inpatient beds, of which 125 are intensive care units, and 75 are for post-operative care. Also on the blueprints are plans for 100 outpatient beds and a 100-room outpatient hotel. Inpatient wards will be made up of 28 beds each, one on each floor of the care centers, which will be spread out over five buildings. Scheduled to begin operations in 2015, the NKS Hospital campus will also include research structures and a new technology building.

 

According to reports, SHP will build NKS in six phases, with phase one of the hospital targeted for completion by April 2016, and phase two a year later in 2017 NKS’s technology building is slated for completion in spring of 2014, The outpatient hotel, research labs, and a parking garage will open in April 2016 The NKS campus will be designed to meet ISO 14001 environmental standards, as well as LEED and GreenBuilding certifications.

 

When completed, NKS will offer services in pediatric care, cancer treatment, cardiovascular disease treatment, neurology and reparative medicine, along with supportive functions in immunology, imaging, and proteomics and genomics.

 

Officials expect NKS to employ approximately 7,000 people, including 1,000 researchers and students, and serve about 480,000 patients and 65,000 to 100,000 emergency patients per year.