HCA Richmond hospitals donate $500,000 for new VCU nursing school building

By Pamela DiSalvo Lepley

Virginia Commonwealth University officials today announced a gift of $500,000 to the School of Nursing from HCA Richmond Hospitals for construction of a new nursing education building. 

“This generous gift makes a very public statement about the commitment of HCA to work with educators to positively affect the supply of adequate numbers of quality nurses who live and work in our community,” said Sheldon M. Retchin, M.D., CEO of the VCU Health System and vice president for VCU Health Sciences. 

HCA Richmond Hospitals’ donation is a major contribution toward the new $17 million VCU School of Nursing education building that will be constructed on the university’s MCV Campus at Leigh and 11^th streets. The state is providing $14 million of the construction cost, with $3 million coming from private funds. 

Bureau of Labor statistics indicate that the nation will need 1 million new nurses to meet the escalating demands of the aging population. Virginia will need 22,000 new nurses. Current projections are that without increases in enrollments in nursing education programs, one in three patients in the state will not have a nurse to care for them by the year 2020. 

“The shortage of nurses creates a point of common concern between health care organizations, such as HCA Richmond Hospitals, and universities such as VCU that educate the future generations of nurses,” said Nancy F. Langston, Ph.D., RN, dean of the VCU School of Nursing. “This generous gift from HCA is an example of the partnerships that must be created if we are to meet the health care needs of the people of Richmond and the entire Commonwealth of Virginia.”

The new, four-story building will be a state-of-the-science nursing teaching and research facility that replaces the current building on Broad Street that was built as a dormitory in 1928. The new building will allow for greater enrollment and a resulting increase in the number of new bachelor’s degree-prepared nurses and the number of graduate nurses preparing to become nursing faculty.

Langston said these new nurses will help to reduce the nursing shortage and assure access to the quality nursing care that is vital to the health of Virginians.

“Being a responsive healthcare provider means not only caring for patients today, but also ensuring that their needs will be met tomorrow,” said Margaret G. Lewis, president of HCA’s Central Atlantic Division. “We look at our gift to the VCU School of Nursing as an investment in nursing, in greater Richmond and in clinical excellence.”  

Construction on the new School of Nursing building is expected to begin this summer, with completion anticipated in 2007.

The VCU School of Nursing is a comprehensive nursing school recently ranked 25^th in the United States in NIH-funded research. U.S. News & World Report lists it among America’s best graduate schools.

HCA Richmond includes 1,796 beds on six hospital campuses, two same-day surgery centers and numerous outpatient imaging treatment facilities.