MD Anderson Patient Care Building 1

The University of Texas System regents approved a budget increase in May 2026 that pushed MD Anderson’s Patient Care Building 1 past $2.9 billion and added it to the UT capital plan. It will be one of the largest single buildings ever built in the Texas Medical Center, which is saying something in a district that already holds the densest concentration of hospital square footage on earth.

Project Scope

The approved program is a 25-floor clinical tower plus a standalone Therapeutic Radiation Center. The tower expands both inpatient beds and outpatient clinic capacity; the radiation building gets separated out because linear accelerators and proton equipment want thick shielding, vibration isolation, and short, direct patient routes — none of which play nicely with a high-rise podium.

The project follows the 600,000-square-foot South Campus Research Building 5, a seven-story Elkus Manfredi-designed research facility that completed in spring 2026. Together they represent a capital push tied to a $2.5 billion philanthropic campaign.

Why It Matters

Cancer care is shifting to outpatient volume faster than most academic medical centers can build for it. Infusion, imaging, and radiation now drive throughput more than bed count, and MD Anderson’s constraint has been clinic capacity, not inpatient capacity. A 25-story tower is an old-fashioned answer to that problem, but in the Texas Medical Center there is nowhere to go but up.

At $2.9 billion, this also lands squarely in the healthcare cost conversation. Construction input prices climbed at their fastest annual pace since the pandemic this spring, and hospital owners across the country are watching approved budgets get revised before shovels move. MD Anderson got its number reset before construction, which is cheaper than resetting it after.

Project Team & Details