Cherokee Nation breaks ground on $400 million hospital

The new facility will replace and double the size of the nearly 40-year-old W.W. Hastings Hospital in Tahlequah, but it will keep the Hastings name, officials said.

Being built on a parking lot at the tribe’s existing Tahlequah medical campus, the new 127-bed hospital will connect by sky bridge with the Cherokee Nation Outpatient Health Clinic. And it will offer several features not available at the current Hastings Hospital, including a rooftop helipad, a neonatal intensive care unit, a surgery center and a hospice.

Not only will the new hospital save lives and create jobs, but it will represent a new attitude within the Cherokee Nation, said Mike Shambaugh, speaker of the Tribal Council.

“We’re not going to wait for something to happen,” Shambaugh said. “‘This is what we’re going to do and how we’re going to do it.’”

Planning for the hospital started in December 2021, when Hoskin Cherokee Nation breaks ground on $400 million hospital signed legislation authorizing $440 million worth of investments in capital improvements for the tribe’s health care system. The rest of the funds will provide for a new clinic in Salina and improvements at Northeastern State University’s College of Optometry.

The hospital’s construction will take about two years, officials said.

“I can’t wait to see the possibilities that this hospital is going to bring and the new opportunities it’s going to bring,” said Dr. R. Stephen Jones, executive director of Cherokee Nation Health Services. “It’s going to impact this generation, and it’s going to impact generations to come.”

November 2022 video: Cherokee Nation opens $20 million language facility