The District has reached a definitive agreement for George Washington University Hospital’s majority owner to operate a new acute-care facility on the St. Elizabeths East campus in Southeast D.C., more than a year after beginning to work toward a deal that seemed at times to be tenuous at best.
The city has also established a memorandum of understanding with Howard University Hospital that positions the city to assist in building a new academic teaching facility on its Northwest D.C. campus, which the university has been considering for years.
Both moves aim to address health disparities and inequity in the District, said City Administrator Rashad Young in an interview Wednesday night. “We have worked for a long time in both defining and developing strategies to deal with that issue, and we see these two initiatives as critical in how we advance our efforts in this regard.”
City officials have worked out an operator agreement with Universal Health Services Inc. (NYSE: UHS), the majority owner of George Washington University Hospital, as well as the namesake university and George Washington Medical Faculty Associates, the physician group that helps staff the Foggy Bottom hospital. The upshot: UHS will manage the planned Ward 8 hospital as part of a larger system that links to GWU Hospital’s flagship campus.