‘Today the Jagiellonian University is proud to open a hospital worthy of the 21st century’, said the JU Rector Prof. Wojciech Nowak at the opening ceremony of the largest and most advanced medical centre in Poland, which will receive its first patients in less than a month.
The contract to build the new hospital was signed in January 2015. The tender was won by a consortium consisting of Warbud SA, VAMED Standortentwicklung und Engineering GmbH&CO KG, and Porr Polska SA. Major construction works started a year later. For 3 years an average of 700 builders a day worked at a 15-hectare construction site between Jakubowskiego and Kostaneckiego streets in Kraków.
As pointed out by the JU Rector, the first plans to build a new university hospital emerged in the 1970s, but the idea had to wait over 40 years to materialise, partially due to many critical voices, questioning its purpose and feasibility. The Rector thanked all those who made the completion of this bold project possible, stressing that the professional medical staff with access to the state-of-the-art equipment and infrastructure will ensure the highest quality of diagnostics and treatment at the hospital, which will also serve as an effective education and training facility for medical students and young physicians.
The new University Hospital will significantly contribute to the improvement of health protection of the citizens of Kraków and Małopolska region. The entire complex consists of 13 buildings with a total floor area of 110 thousand square metres. It contains 24 operation theatres, an emergency ward, over 25 clinical departments, 27 outpatient clinics, and administrative premises. The has state-of-the-art medical equipment, including a cyberknife, thomotherapy machine, O-arm x-ray system, intraoperative radiotherapy equipment, neurosurgical and surgical robot, as well as HDR brachytherapy system. A multi-storey car park and a helipad have been built next to the hospital.
The first clinical units, including nephrology, general surgery, infectious diseases and gastroenterology, will start moving to the new premises in mid-November. The hospital is going to continue providing medical services throughout the process, which is to be completed in the first quarter of 2020.
It should be noted that several hospital departments, such as obstetrics, neonatology, psychiatry, ophthalmology and geriatrics, will remain in the current premises at ul. Kopernika, but they may also be relocated to Prokocim in the next few years.
The entire project cost over 1.2 billion zlotys, 800 million of which was covered by the Polish state. Funds were also provided by the Małopolska Voivodeship and the University itself.
