Novant Health has broken ground on a 60 bed inpatient rehabilitation hospital at 5301 Wrightsville Avenue in Wilmington, North Carolina. The $85 million project relocates beds from New Hanover Regional Medical Center and is scheduled to finish in early 2028. Capacity will exceed 1,500 admissions.
Construction has started on a replacement inpatient rehabilitation hospital in Wilmington, North Carolina, and the project functions as an enabling move inside a larger master facility plan.
Sixty inpatient rehabilitation beds now operating on the South 17th Street campus of Novant Health New Hanover Regional Medical Center will shift to a 15-acre site at 5301 Wrightsville Avenue, where Novant Health New Hanover Orthopedic Hospital already runs. Vacating the older building matters beyond the rehabilitation service line, because a planned 120 bed heart and vascular patient tower is slated to occupy that footprint.
Sequencing follows from that dependency. Novant Health has targeted 2031 for the tower, so the rehabilitation replacement effectively controls when the larger phase can begin.
North Carolina regulates bed relocations through its certificate of need program. Novant Health Inc. and Novant Health New Hanover Regional Medical Center LLC filed in March 2025, and state review materials carried a $92 million estimate with a December 2027 completion date. A health system spokesperson cited $85 million at the groundbreaking, and construction is now estimated to finish in early 2028.
Volume drives the program. Current operations handle roughly 850 patients each year, and the new building is sized for more than 1,500 annual admissions. Neurologic diagnoses account for over half of the caseload, and more than 80 percent of patients discharge to home.
Capital traces to the 2021 sale of New Hanover Regional Medical Center to Novant Health, which carried a $2.5 billion regional investment commitment. A February 2026 board approval valued the New Hanover County program at up to $1 billion over five to seven years.
The facility will hold 60 private patient rooms on the Wrightsville Avenue campus. Novant Health New Hanover Rehabilitation Hospital, the region’s original inpatient rehabilitation facility, opened in 1994.