$214M IU Health plan includes hospital in West Lafayette
Location for hospital still being finalized in West Lafayette, part of plan that will add a cancer center at IU Health Arnett campus, renovations at West Side specialty offices
IU Health on Friday announced it would put $214 million into facilities in Greater Lafayette, including West Lafayette’s first hospital with inpatient care and a new cancer center on the IU Health Arnett Hospital campus in Lafayette.
“We’ve seen how Greater Lafayette is growing,” Art Vasquez, president of IU Health’s West Region, said Friday. “This has been a while in the making, so it’s an exciting milestone for all of us. … It's going to create access to care and in new ways. I think what's most important about this is it's going to create deeper specialty care in the community at large.”
IU Health is still nailing down where the hospital will be in West Lafayette, Vasquez said. He said an announcement about that would come in a month or so.
Designs are expected to be done in 2025, with construction starting in 2026. Vasquez said IU Health is aiming to take the first patients in the new facilities in mid-2028.
Vasquez said the new facilities are expected to take pressure off IU Health Arnett Hospital and other services in Greater Lafayette. But he said questions about landing emergency services, in particular, in West Lafayette was something brought to his attention as soon as he took his current position four years ago.
“I met with (then-West Lafayette) Mayor (John) Dennis, when I first took this role, and this was one of his first asks to me: If you could figure out a way to do this, you know, it would be great for the community,” Vasquez said. “Mayor (Erin) Easter has been a voice in my ear, at least in the planning process, too.”
Easter said Friday that the conversations about getting more health options, including emergency care with overnight beds, have gone back years. Requests to consider hospital service in West Lafayette have included noting that it’s a 20-minute drive from most parts of the city to Lafayette’s two hospitals, situated on the east side of Lafayette.
“I think today’s announcement is a recognition of the growth of the city of West Lafayette, of our surrounding communities and of the need of having adequate health care services within our city,” Easter said. “I think what any hospital system is probably recognizing is just the trajectory of the city of West Lafayette and really the ability, for any system, to provide great medical service in our community at a scale that makes sense for the size of our city.
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The moves, recently approved by the IU Health Board of Directors, come in three parts.
A hospital for West Lafayette: IU Health, which operates IU Health Arnett Hospital at Veterans Memorial Parkway and McCarty Lane in Lafayette, joins a recent rush on hospital services in West Lafayette, with plans of varying scale in the works by Franciscan Health and Indianapolis-based Ascension-St. Vincent.
On Friday, IU Health was touting this as the first full-service hospital for the West Side.
The system said it would offer a 24/7 emergency department, inpatient care, multiple operating rooms, a helipad for emergency transportation and advanced imaging and laboratory services.
“Creating an emergency department in West Lafayette that also takes care of patients that come into that facility, that’s a big part of this,” Vasquez said.
He having a second hospital in the community would allow IU Health Arnett Hospital room to do more, too. He said IU Health Arnett “is very full” in its emergency department, operating rooms and inpatient space.
“Creating an access point with a hospital in West Lafayette and decompressing Arnett to a certain degree is going to allow Arnett to scale even more,” Vasquez said. “We’re thinking about things like how we deliver neurosurgery, vascular care, thoracic care, things like that that are going to keep care close to home. … So, this is a complete overall community plan of how do we service West Lafayette, position to grow with West Lafayette, but also enhance the Lafayette center of care of Arnett and what that is our community.”
Angel Valentin is trustee of Wabash Township, which includes much of West Lafayette and the unincorporated areas surrounding the city.
"This new hospital will improve healthcare access to the more than 32,000 residents that will live in unincorporated Wabash Township by the early 2030s,” Valentin said Friday after the announcement. “This new hospital will substantially reduce ambulance transport and out-of-service times for our fire department's service area, but more importantly it will improve patient outcomes during critical medical calls. We are grateful to Mayors Dennis and Easter for continuing to push for a hospital with emergency and inpatient care throughout their terms, and to IU Health for listening to that need and choosing to make a major investment in our residents' healthcare.”
A cancer center: The plan includes bringing IU Health’s Cancer Center from North 26th and Ferry streets into a 55,000-square-foot facility on IU Health Arnett campus. According to the plans, the new facility would be able to provide infusion therapies to 32 patients at the same time, which is a 23% increase over the current capacity. The cancer center also would include two linear accelerators, advanced radiation therapy technologies and the IU Health Precision Genomics Program.
He said doctors based at 26th and Ferry have asked to have closer access to the hospital for consultations with physicians and labs, which would happen with the new cancer center. He said it also would put patients closer to imaging and other services available at the hospital.
“First and foremost, it's about the patient and about the clinician that takes care of the patient,” Vasquez said.
The space on North 26th Street would be redeployed later for other IU Health services, he said.
Specialty care in West Lafayette: The plan includes an 8,000-square-foot renovation of the IU Health Medical Offices on Sagamore Parkway West in West Lafayette into a multispecialty clinic. IU Health announced it also would create rapid access clinics in oncology and cardiology and a walk-in orthopedic clinic at the site.
“The feedback that I get from the community is, hey, I have to drive all the way in from Otterbein to Lafayette for my cardiology appointment, for pulmonary, for nephrology, things like that,” Vasquez said. “This expansion is going to allow us to bring a number of new specialists to the community.”
IU Health officials said the combined investment in Greater Lafayette would mean 210 new full-time health care jobs by 2030. That includes 29 physicians, 10 advanced practice providers and 69 nurses.
IU Health’s moves come on the heels of others in West Lafayette.
From Franciscan Health: Franciscan Health announced plans in June to build a $25 million, 24,000-square-foot standalone emergency department near U.S. 231 and Cumberland Avenue, on land the hospital system has been signaling it would develop in West Lafayette for close to a decade. The project, as laid out by Franciscan Health, would include eight emergency exam rooms, including one equipped to handle trauma cases. That compares to Franciscan East’s emergency department on Creasy Lane in Lafayette with 28 rooms, including two fully equipped for trauma situations, attached to a 225-bed hospital. Terry Wilson, CEO of Franciscan Health in Lafayette, said at the time that while “we have talked about this forever … a couple of things have changed.” He attributed that to “enormous” growth projected in West Lafayette. “The number of people over there is impressive and more to come, with the (SK hynix) chip factory and other things,” Wilson said at the time. Hospital officials said construction was expected to in 2025 and be done within two years.
In March 2024, Franciscan Health opened at $43 million Cancer Center on the north side of its Lafayette campus on Creasy Lane. The 68,000-square-foot, three-story facility brought Franciscan’s oncology services, spread in five spots in various parts of the hospital campus and in offices off-campus in Lafayette, into one spot.
From Ascension-St. Vicent: Purdue and Indianapolis-based Ascension-St. Vincent have been talking about a neighborhood hospital near the corner of U.S. 231 and Airport Road in West Lafayette for three years. That project in Purdue’s Discovery Park District, first announced in 2022, had been stalled since shortly after a November 2022 ceremonial groundbreaking at the site. At the time, the anticipated $25 million micro-hospital project was supposed to be ready by spring 2024, with eight emergency treatment rooms, eight inpatient medical beds and CT and other imaging services. Ascension officials said they had overall plans that would come in closer to $70 million at some point. In April 2025, Purdue and Ascension officials confirmed that the project was still on, through neither specified whether services, space and other details would remain the same or had been changed. Stephan Masoncup, chief strategy officer for Ascension St. Vincent, in April told Based in Lafayette that the facility would include advanced urgent care, imaging, labs and primary care. The Indianapolis-based hospital system did not specify a timeline for construction or opening.
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Some much needed good news on the hospital/health care front. The area west of the Wabash has felt abandoned by the Hospitals for much too long.
And with what
officials are seeing as a huge population growth in the West Lafayette area, it boggles the mind that they would not assist the township's need for more emergency and fire protection dollars.