Slovak healthcare is undergoing significant modernization: approximately 400 projects are underway under the Recovery and Resilience Plan, ranging from minor renovations to the construction of new hospitals. Flagship builds in Martin and Banská Bystrica are meeting milestones and aiming for shell-and-core completion by June 2026. Alongside the concrete, digital infrastructure and automation are being prepared so the new hospitals operate efficiently.
Scale of investment and financing
More than 1,1 billion euros is going into the construction and renovation of hospitals, and roughly another 200 million euros is allocated to the renewal of healthcare facilities. The projects are spread across Slovakia, and almost every hospital is undergoing greater or lesser modernization.
For drawing on the Recovery and Resilience Plan, a key goal is to reach the shell-and-core stage (Shell & Core) by the end of June 2026. Fit-out and technology outfitting can then continue, to be financed from the state budget and possibly also from EU funds in the next programming period. Schedules are monitored and evaluated by the Healthcare Implementation Agency, which continuously addresses risks of delays.
Martin: a greenfield hospital
The University Hospital Martin is rising outside the current hospital campus as a greenfield project. The building will have two underground and seven above-ground floors; the fifth above-ground floor is currently being poured. Approximately 264 million euros has been allocated to the project, and the government has approved a top-up financing model to bring the build through to full operation.
The shell-and-core milestone is planned for June 2026, with commissioning and the start of operations expected by the end of 2028. In parallel with construction, streams are running to prepare medical processes, ICT, logistics, and future equipment. The design envisages smart infrastructure—from zones for autonomous robots and charging stations to planning routes so they do not intersect unsafely with the movement of staff and patients.
Banská Bystrica: construction during full operations
The Bystrica project is a brownfield and is proceeding alongside uninterrupted patient care. The hospital first had to relocate staff to refurbished buildings, carry out demolition, reroute utilities, and it signed an acceleration agreement with the contractor. Among the biggest challenges were moving the kitchen to leased premises of Matej Bel University within a radius of up to 2 km, and a complex overnight water-main rerouting with a shutdown and provision of water tankers and/or toilets, while surgeries continued.
The hospital is being designed digitally and is preparing a “data hub” into which technologies will be interconnected via an overprovisioned low-voltage network. A higher degree of automation is planned: an expanded pneumatic tube system, a fully automated laboratory and a pharmacy for compounding solutions, and linking the patient and employee applications with the information system, including automatic attendance recording. The shell-and-core milestone is due by June 2026, with handover of the building by 31. 12. 2028, while the northern part of the building is to enter early use earlier. Framework procurements worth roughly 99 million euros are already being prepared, since, for example, a CT scanner has a lead time of up to 18 months, and the relocation of departments will proceed in stages without interrupting emergency care.
