15-04-2025
D.C.'s new Ward 8 hospital first to open in the city in 25 years
D.C.'s first new hospital in 25 years opened this week in Congress Heights.
Why it matters: Cedar Hill Regional Medical Center GW Health is part of Mayor Muriel Bowser's plan to erect a comprehensive health care system in Wards 7 and 8, an area with a majority-Black population that has seen higher rates of poverty and poor health outcomes.
United Medical Center, previously the only hospital east of the Anacostia River, closed this week. It had been winding down services for years after financial issues and reports of poor care.
State of play: The $434 million project sits on Ward 8's redeveloped St. Elizabeths East campus, now home to a new Whitman-Walker health center, Sycamore & Oak, and the Washington Mystics arena.
The hospital will have a trauma and emergency center (plus a pediatric emergency center), as well as a NICU and a helipad.
It will also provide outpatient services like family medicine and gynecology and obstetrics.
Plus: It'll provide labor and delivery services — the first time this has been available east of the river since United Medical Center was ordered to stop providing delivery services in 2017 amid dangerous incidents.
