UPMC Expansion Could Reach Far Beyond Pittsburgh

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PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- Last week, UPMC announced a $2 billion plan to build three new hospitals in Pittsburgh and change health care as we know it.

Now, we're learning that the health care giant's expansion could reach far beyond Pittsburgh.

"We are so excited to be able to create the hospitals of the future," UPMC Chief Operating Officer Leslie Davis said.

If you wanted to know what the future of health care will look like, Steven Shapiro and Leslie Davis would be the ones to ask.

So what does "hospitals of the future" actually mean?

"One would be precision medicine," UPMC Chief Medical Officer Dr. Steven Shapiro said, "and really determining what disease this patient is at risk for and if they have a disease, what's the right treatment for them? What's their course going to be? That's a great opportunity to allow us to reduce unnecessary care and target patients that need it."

The patients who need it aren't just here. UPMC has already expanded beyond western Pennsylvania, and while he's not getting specific, CEO Geoffrey Romoff has hinted at more and bigger.

"We're not duplicating care or providing unnecessary care, but providing the very right care in the right places, and then we're able to spread that across a larger geographic population," Davis said. "It makes perfect sense."

Back here at home, UPMC is promising cutting edge, specialized medicine – even cures for problems doctors can't cure today.

"The whole idea of these specialty hospitals is to bring groups of people who think specifically about these patients' problems with a laser focus," Shapiro said. "A new hospital allows you to bring groups together that we can't do with field hospitals right now."

Those new hospitals, like the new tower at Presby, will provide better creature comforts when you're sick.

"This will make sure that we have a consistent approach to how we take care of patients, that each person will have their own room, their own bathroom," Davis said.

So will non-UPMC patients be cut out of this UPMC future of health care, and will it cost UPMC patients more?

Davis says "absolutely not."