Expanding health care access to meet increasing needs in Utah
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Diverging Reports Breakdown
Utah’s growing as are health care services to meet demand – Deseret News
The state of Utah is expanding its health care system. The state has added more than 50,000 new residents in the past year. The number of new residents is expected to continue to rise. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is working to meet the growing demand for health care in the state. The University of Utah plans to open a new health care center in the fall. The new center will be the first of its kind in the United States. It will be located in the city of Salt Lake City and will be part of the U.N. Children’s Hospital of Utah. The center will provide health care services for children and adults with developmental disabilities, as well as adults with mental health issues. The hospital will also be home to a cancer center, which will provide care for the elderly and disabled. It is expected that the center will open its doors to the public in the spring of next year, when it will cost $1.5 million to $2 million to build.
KEY POINTS Intermountain Health, University of Utah Health and others are creating new care options for Utahns as the state’s population and medical needs grow.
That includes new hospitals, clinics, expanded services and renovation of existing facilities.
Health experts expert Utah’s needs to continue to grow and providers hope to keep up to meet the needs.
Utah’s health care landscape has its own song this summer, and the beat relies heavily on the scrape of shovels, the pounding of jackhammers and the general clatter of construction.
The Beehive State’s population is growing, creating need for expanded facilities and health care services. And hospitals, clinics and other providers are responding, opening new facilities or services in growing-population areas or expanding others as community needs change.
Last year alone, the state added more than 50,300 new residents, most of it along the Wasatch Front. As Deseret News reported in February, a report by the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah puts the state’s population at roughly 3,507,000 residents.
Said John Poelman, interim executive director of the One Utah Health Collaborative, “We expect the Gardner projections include not just raw population growth, but also rising average age and chronic conditions, all of which will drive higher demand for care.”
Poelman added that “Utah will need to grow its health care capacity across the board, but especially in areas where we already fall short. Access to primary care, behavioral health and aging-related services are where we should prioritize expansion.”
As many of the projects show, others in the health care system agree.
McCall Rowley, vice president of finance for Intermountain Health, sees the burgeoning population clearly, noting that her health system’s service areas are experiencing “steady population growth, which is anticipated to continue for the foreseeable future.”
In response, Rowley said that “Intermountain is investing in these growing communities by providing primary care access through new clinics, lower cost-of-care settings with imaging centers and ambulatory surgical centers, specialty care with new cancer centers and multi-specialty clinics, and pediatric care with a new pediatric hospital on the Miller Family Campus in Lehi.”
The growing population has been accompanied by higher disease incidence, as well. Utah and the U.S. in general are both experiencing an increase in requests for mental health care and services for an aging population, among other needs that must be met.
There’s a lot going on.
Bigger population, growing health care need
There’s no way to know all the expansions, new centers and other changes happening within the health care arena in any state. But it’s easy to find a robust sampling that demonstrates how much needs and those responding to them are changing in Utah. Deseret News has amassed a sampling of renovation, new construction and other projects that hints at how medical care is changing and growing locally.
For instance, in the area of behavioral health, Intermountain has a new inpatient behavioral health unit at Alta View Hospital in Sandy and has replaced and expanded Primary Children’s pediatric behavioral health campus in Taylorsville, with financial help from a grant from the state.
University of Utah Health has been just as busy growing its footprint to meet expanded needs.
The University of Utah broke ground in April on a Huntsman Cancer Institute treatment center in Vineyard, touting it as “the Mountain West’s only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center.” The location in Utah County will provide access to clinical trials, harness artificial intelligence to analyze data, train students in conjunction with Utah Valley University and Brigham Young University and provide treatment for some patients who at this point travel an hour or more each way to receive care.
One of the university’s biggest projects is a new hospital and health campus in West Valley City. The Eccles Health Campus and Eccles Hospital broke ground this summer and will open in 2028. University of Utah teamed with the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation, which made the largest gift that the university has ever seen — $75 million — to make the hospital and health campus possible.
The $855 million campus will be the university’s biggest off-campus medical facility and is projected to serve more than 426,000 patients a year.
Cancer treatment is also expanding. Intermountain is building new cancer treatment centers in Saratoga Springs and Park City. Rowley said primary care clinics like the Deseret Color Clinic in St. George provide access points close to home for those not on the Wasatch Front.
Other recent University of Utah health-related projects include the Kem and Carolyn Gardner Mental Health Crisis Care Center, which opened in late March in South Salt Lake to provide comprehensive mental health care.
In a related move, University of Utah Health will also open a 24/7 walk-in crisis care facility for youth ages 5 to 17 in Research Park. The space has been renovated from its previous life providing adult crisis care and is expected to open later this month.
“The need for a youth crisis care center was identified through a combination of data analysis, community feedback and frontline clinical experience,” Anne Stephens, director of the new youth crisis center, said. “Over recent years, Utah has seen a significant increase in the number of children and teens experiencing acute mental health crises-including rising rates of suicidal ideation, self-harm, and behavioral health emergencies. Emergency departments across the state have reported being overwhelmed by the number of youths presenting with mental health concerns, often without the appropriate space or resources to provide age-appropriate care.”
She said the goal is to meet demand with a “trauma-informed, child-centered approach that relieves pressure on emergency departments and helps families access timely, compassionate mental health support in moments of crisis.”
Related New Utah crisis center a different take on mental health
Intermountain Health turned 50 this year, but some of its facilities were here before the organization even came into being. Intermountain plans to replace LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City. The hospital, like the St. Vincent Hospital in Billings, Montana, is more than 100 years old and both are getting do-overs with designs that will be modern and more efficient.
Intermountain also recently built a new hospital patient tower in Logan to replace part of its hospital there. Said Rowley, “The projects help facilitate Intermountain’s population health focus of keeping communities healthy by providing proactive care from screenings to chronic condition management through its clinics and hospitals.”
Among other University Health projects are a new Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine, set to open late next summer, the Sorenson Center for Medical Innovation that will open next spring and the Huntsman Mental Health Institute Translational Research building, slated to open in October 2026.
Not just health systems
MountainStar completed a series of expansions in 2023 and 2024, including freestanding emergency rooms, urgent care clinics, training centers, hospital renovations and expansions and more.
But hospitals and health systems aren’t the only ones changing to meet medical needs.
Utah County, for example, is getting a specialty clinic focused on multiple sclerosis, greatly reducing the distance that some patients with MS have to travel for care. It’s in Lehi, near Point of the Mountain, and is being staffed initially by one physician and one nurse practitioner.
Rocky Mountain MS Clinic recently opened a new specialty clinic in Lehi. | Rocky Mountain MS Clinic-Lehi
The new MS center is an expansion of the Rocky Mountain MS Clinic in Salt Lake City and will be the first new clinic launched in partnership with Nira Medical, which helps independent neurology practices grow. Dr. John F. Foley, founder of Rocky Mountain MS Clinic, describes Nira as a new platform that brings specialty neurology to underserved communities, noting the new clinic offers space for infusions, research and patient exams. It started treating patients June 30.
Dr. Yashma Patel, the new clinic’s physician, said Utah has many patients with multiple sclerosis, which is believed to be more common among those of northern European descent, and there has not been enough specialty care not only in Utah, but in the region. Rocky Mountain has been serving patients from five states in its single location.
“Opening a second clinic is ideal. I suspect that Lehi is going to expand very quickly and they will also have to keep expanding. We have the infrastructure to do so,” Patel said.
Patel noted that Nira is run by neurologists who understand the challenges and provides resources, “but we still get to keep our autonomy and treat the patients the way we believe they should be treated,” Patel said.
North Star Recovery & Wellness, a Utah-based company, announced in January that it’s planning to make a $150 million investment in adding 500 inpatient beds to help address a shortage of mental health care, as Axios has reported.
New, free clinic at UVU
Poelman, of the One Utah Health Collaborative, told Deseret News that “more facilities won’t matter if people can’t afford care. Cost is often a bigger barrier than capacity.” He noted that many people avoid care because they’re worried about medical debt.
One of the newest projects to increase access to health care is firmly rooted in solving that problem.
The Marc C. and Deborah H. Bingham Foundation and Utah Valley University will open a full-service, free community medical clinic this winter on UVU’s Orem campus.
“The Bingham Family Clinic represents the best way to connect education and compassion,” said Astrid S. Tuminez, president of UVU, in a news release. “We are building a future where every person, regardless of circumstance, has access to quality healthcare. The clinic will also prepare UVU students to lead with skill, empathy and purpose.”
The notice added that the clinic’s services will include “primary care, scheduled specialty appointments, dental hygiene and on-site pharmacy assistance. The clinic is expected to operate five days a week and is designed to serve individuals without access to medical insurance, with no obligation to pay for the care they receive.”
The clinic is reportedly a deeply personal undertaking for the Binghams, because when Marc Bingham was young, he suffered severe burns and a traveling doctor “by pure chance” saved his life. “Our vision is simple,” he said in announcement. “Healthcare for everyday people, regardless of financial situation. My own life was saved because of access to care and we want to make sure no one in our community is left behind.”