D.C.'s new Ward 8 hospital first to open in the city in 25 years

• United Medical Center, previously the only hospital east of the Anacostia River, closed this week. It had been winding down services for years after financial issues and reports of poor care.

State of play: The $434 million project sits on Ward 8's redeveloped St. Elizabeths East campus, now home to a new Whitman-Walker health center, Sycamore & Oak, and the Washington Mystics arena.

• The hospital will have a trauma and emergency center (plus a pediatric emergency center), as well as a NICU and a helipad.
• It will also provide outpatient services like family medicine and gynecology and obstetrics.

Plus: It'll provide labor and delivery services — the first time this has been available east of the river since United Medical Center was ordered to stop providing delivery services in 2017 amid dangerous incidents.

Zoom out: The city opened an urgent care center in Ward 8 in 2022 in partnership with GW, and a $22 million freestanding emergency department is expected to open in Ward 7 in 2027.