Bucharest’s new metropolitan hospital, second-biggest building in Romania after Parliament Palace

Bucharest’s new metropolitan hospital, a EUR 400 million project, will be the second-biggest building in Romania after the Parliament’s Palace, according to the project’s architect. The municipality hopes to start building the hospital in early 2020 and complete it in three years, although it only relies on the local budget to finance this project, mayor Gabriela Firea said.

“It will be a very large building. The total area of this hospital will be 247,000 sqm, which represents an extremely important building. It will be the second building in Romania after the Parliament’s Palace,” architect Gabriel Dumitrache said, quoted by Mediafax.

Bucharest mayor Gabriela Firea presented on Wednesday, December 11, the project of the capital’s new metropolitan hospital. “The Metropolitan Hospital Bucharest, the first intelligent hospital in Romania, which will be able to compete with the most modern medical units in the world, becomes a reality, as we promised last year. We have completed the feasibility study, and, in March 2020, we will start work on the Metropolitan Hospital,” Firea announced.

The hospital will have 1,000 beds, of which 750 for continuous hospitalization, 31 operating rooms as well as rooms for imaging investigations and nuclear medicine. The hospital will provide medical services as well as related services for Bucharest residents and patients from the country. It will treat 45,000 hospitalized patients per year plus 280,000 outpatients, according to Firea.

The project will also include a center of excellence, university campus, accommodation for medical staff and patients’ relatives, kindergarten and nursery. The metropolitan hospital will be located in Pipera, in Northern Bucharest, an area that has developed in the last 20 years into one of the city's biggest office hubs and top residential areas, where a lot of expats also live.

The total cost is estimated at EUR 400 million for the building and equipment, which are estimated to be completed in three years.

However, the Bucharest mayor said that the municipality hasn’t been able to draw EU funds for this project, as the European Commission said it would finance three other regional hospitals in Romania, in poorer regions, while the Bucharest-Ilfov region is the richest in Romania, in terms of GDP per capita. “No national funds have been allotted either, from the Health Ministry or Development Ministry, so we only rely on the local budget,” Firea said, according to Mediafax.

The full presentation of this project is available in this video published by mayor Gabriela Firea on her Facebook page: