Luminis Health to Break Ground on Women's Pavilion at Lanham Hospital

For generations, going into labor in northern Prince George's County has meant getting in a car. Eight out of 10 pregnant women in the county have historically traveled outside its borders to deliver, a staggering access gap that has shaped prenatal care decisions, strained families during labor, and drained Medicaid and insurance dollars out of the county for decades.

On April 22, Luminis Health will break ground on the facility it says will finally close that gap. The ceremony at Doctors Community Medical Center in Lanham runs from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. and marks the formal start of construction on a 67,000-square-foot, multi-story Women's Health Pavilion at the county's 207-bed hospital.

The pavilion is the centerpiece of Luminis' broader Maternal Health and Campus Modernization Initiative. Inside, it will house private labor and delivery rooms, dedicated C-section operating rooms, midwife-supported birthing suites, postpartum and nursery units and a Level II special care nursery, capable of caring for premature and medically fragile newborns without a transfer to a facility across the county line.

"Our Maternal Health and Campus Modernization Initiative will build a new Women's Health Pavilion, modernize critical clinical spaces and strengthen the campus for future generations," Luminis said in public materials about the project.

The project is years in the making. County officials, hospital administrators and state health planners have spent multiple budget cycles securing approvals and funding rounds to restore inpatient obstetrics to northern Prince George's County. The April 22 groundbreaking converts those planning documents into concrete and steel, with Luminis targeting a 2028 opening.

Beyond the clinical stakes, Luminis frames the initiative as an economic anchor for the county. Construction is projected to create hundreds of jobs and generate millions in economic output; once operational, the pavilion is expected to sustain dozens of permanent healthcare positions and generate ongoing tax revenue. The project is also expected to keep Medicaid and private insurance dollars circulating locally rather than flowing to hospitals in neighboring jurisdictions.

The broader campus modernization component extends upgrades beyond the new pavilion, touching surgical, emergency and specialty care spaces already on the Lanham campus. When the pavilion opens in 2028, it will require a parallel buildup of labor and delivery nurses, OB/GYNs and neonatal staff, shifting the county's healthcare workforce in ways that health planners have long argued are overdue.

For a county that has pushed for local obstetric services for years, the April 22 ceremony marks less a beginning than a reckoning with how long this investment took to arrive.