Nemours to see $130M expansion focused on its youngest patients, newest doctors

January 31, 2025 7

WILMINGTON – Nemours is preparing to help more patients in northern Delaware after announcing a $130 million expansion at its Alfred I. duPont Campus in Wilmington.

President of the Delaware Valley Region Mark Marcantano said the new upgrades would bring expanded services to its neonatology, cancer and cardiology programs, along with a groundbreaking maternal and fetal health program. The group also plans a revitalization project of the historic institute building on the main campus.

“Taking on these exciting expansion projects are important next steps in terms of how we deliver child health care,” he told the Delaware Business Times, calling the expansion opportunities ‘significant investments.’

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Once completed, the expansion could allow the regional pediatric health care system to serve hundreds of additional patients, he said.

“We won’t know exactly [how many] until the facilities are open,” Marcantano said. “But it certainly goes beyond our four-state catchment area. We want to be the first-choice destination stop for world class pediatric care.”

That care starts before children are even born through the organization’s advanced delivery program. The expansion projects will turn that program into a “nationally leading, state-of-the-art maternal and fetal health program,” according to Nemours.

“As maternal-fetal care advances, Nemours sees transformational potential to elevate the health of children and families in Delaware through improved diagnostics and cutting-edge maternal-fetal therapies,” Nemours Children’s Health, Delaware Valley Surgeon-in-Chief Dr. Kate Deans said in a prepared statement.

When complete, Nemours will be able to keep many of its birthing patients and their newborns together in the same facility through four new labor and delivery birthing suites, eight new antepartum and postpartum rooms and three operating rooms for both fetal and maternal care.

To continue improving its maternal and fetal health care offerings, Nemours also announced that three specialists will be joining the ranks over the next year and a half between Delaware and Florida. Dr. Eric Bergh will be joining the Delaware-based team while Dr. Julie Moldenhauer and Dr. Christina Paidas Teefey will offer specialized care in Florida.

As Nemours works to expand its care for families welcoming a new child to the mix, the organization is concurrently working to expand its neonatology program for those children who need advanced care early in life.

Nemours already boasts Delaware’s only Level IV Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), but more support is needed to support the needs of the growing area.

Once complete, the expanded NICU will house an additional 14 new inpatient rooms, offering a total of 45 beds for Nemours’ youngest patients.

The expansion will also include the opening of the Lisa Dean Moseley Foundation Institute for Cancer and Blood Disorders in early 2025 thanks to a donation from the Lisa Dean Moseley Foundation. The new facility will come in at 24,000 square feet, featuring 24 inpatient beds in the first phase of the project, which Marcantano said would be state-of-the-art.

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“A state-of-the-art facility means being the very vanguard of space design. It means having the space flow and the quality of space, if you will, to support the top talent, the equipment that is needed for care, the families that are often there for care and allowing us to move those patients through the care and delivery phases,” he told DBT. “You will often see a healing garden as a part of the care journey, particularly in this space. Resting space, parent space, these are all important parts of the holistic experience.”

Many of the rooms, he added, will, in fact, overlook beautiful gardens seen at the Nemours Estate which the organization says will promote healing and recovery. The center will also feature a 19,000 square foot outpatient day hospital and infusion center along with space “designed to foster clinical trial participation” which will offer a significant expansion of the current programs offerings.

Like the maternal and fetal program expansion, Nemours will bring several doctors to the neonatology programs, including incoming Cardiovascular Medicine Chair, Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery and Nemours Children’s Cardiac Center, Delaware Valley, Executive Director Dr. Aaron W. Eckhauser. Nemours Cardiac Center will also accept a new chief of Cardiac Anestesia and co-director in Dr. Mark Twite.

Rounding out Nemours’ $130 million expansion is the revitalization efforts of the historic duPont Institute building which first opened in 1940 as a children’s orthopedic hospital. The upgrades will see to it that the facility becomes a state-of-the-art administrative office building for the organization, preserving core architecture along the way.

Marcantano said the upgrades will also provide better educational experiences on the property as it includes interactive pediatric simulation experiences.

In addition to its expansion efforts which leaders hope to complete over the next couple of years, the leading pediatric care organization also recently announced a new global Medicaid payor model which focuses on whole child health rather than one individual health care service at a time.

“As we’re pursuing what we’re calling a global budget plan to make sure that healthcare for children and families stays affordable, we want to be sure we’re also providing the best quality care possible,” Marcantano told DBT. “We deal with a lot of particularly vulnerable populations – nothing changes in that regard. They should have equal access to state-of-the-art facilities like everyone.”