The North Carolina Senate’s budget for 2025-27 seeks $638 million in additional funding for a children’s hospital that UNC Health and Duke Health intend to build, Senate leader Phil Berger says.
Counting prior appropriations, that would raise the state’s total contribution to the project to $855 million, Berger adds. He left open the possibility that the state’s share of the project could someday rise higher.
Officials from the health systems and the state have said the Triangle project will be a $2 billion effort and require much private support.
The Senate budget proposes that part of the money for the new hospital would come by clawing back much of the state’s contribution to NCInnovation, the nonprofit that wants to help commercialize faculty research at UNC System institutions, mainly outside the Triangle.
The 2023-25 budget handed NCI $500 million to set up an endowment, the investment returns of which are to finance research grants.
Senate leaders now propose to take back the $500 million, replacing it with an annual $25 million direct appropriation to the group for the next four years. The budget bill would channel $400 million of the money to the children’s hospital.
The remaining $100 million would return to the state’s coffers.
Sen. Brent Jackson, R-Sampson, said the annual appropriation to NCI would approximate what the group could’ve expected as the endowment’s annual return.
A House bill filed earlier this year called for redirecting the $500 million to more pressing needs, such as Hurricane Helene relief efforts. Jackson said that “instead of letting the rumor mill run wild … we can just settle this question for the foreseeable future and allow [NCI] to focus on what matters the most, supporting innovative research that will make a real impact.”
NCI Board Chair Kelly King said the new funding model is “entirely consistent with NCInnovation’s budget for applied research grants and commercialization support services, and I am proud to stand with lawmakers in finding flexible ways to address all of the state’s budget priorities, including NCInnovation.”
The new hospital would be exempt from the state’s Certificate of Need laws, which control expansion by healthcare providers, according to the budget bill. Berger said that exemption is needed “to ensure that any potential barriers are eliminated.”
Plans call for the children’s hospital to include 500 beds, plus centers for outpatient care, behavioral health and ambulatory surgeries
Separately, Republican senators are seeking to use the budget to eliminate the complex rules entirely. That would dramatically change healthcare in North Carolina.
