Three days after one of the largest pediatric gifts in U.S. history, Intermountain Health broke ground on Nevada’s first stand-alone children’s hospital.
Written: Dawson Briggs Wilder Medical/Wellness Journalist for VBNRADIO
People arrive to attend Intermountain Health's groundbreaking ceremony for the new Intermountain Health Felicia and Ben Horowitz Children’s Hospital on Monday, Oct. 26, 2026, in Las Vegas. (Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal)
Las Vegas has a hospital for almost everything. Hangovers, bachelor-party fractures, the occasional Elvis impersonator with chest pain. What it has never had, in a metro area of more than two million people, is a stand-alone children’s hospital.
That changed on Monday evening, when Intermountain Health broke ground on the Felicia and Ben Horowitz Children’s Hospital in southwest Las Vegas, three days after announcing the $150 million gift that put the couple’s name on the building.
The money
The Horowitz gift, announced Friday, October 23, is described by Intermountain as one of the largest ever made to a children’s hospital in the United States. Ben Horowitz is co-founder and general partner of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz; Felicia Horowitz is president of the Horowitz Family Foundation and co-founder of The Paid in Full Foundation.
It lands on top of an August pledge of $25 million from the Las Vegas Raiders and three of the team’s owners, the franchise’s largest philanthropic commitment to date. The Raiders will get their name on the rehab gym and the bistro, which feels about right for a football team. All of it rolls into the Intermountain Health Nevada Campaign for Kids, co-chaired by MGM Resorts CEO Bill Hornbuckle and his wife, Wendy.
Intermountain has not published a total project cost or a campaign goal. Local reporting has put the price tag around $1 billion, but that figure is not in the health system’s own materials, so treat it as an estimate.
The building
The numbers that are confirmed are substantial. The campus sits on 33 acres in the UNLV Harry Reid Research and Technology Park. The hospital itself will run about 828,600 square feet, with an initial 180-bed inpatient tower that can expand to 228. Planned services include neonatal care, pediatric and cardiac intensive care, emergency and trauma, orthopedics, cancer and bone marrow transplant services, and behavioral health. Opening is expected in 2030.
Intermountain is pitching it as a destination not just for Nevada but for Arizona and southern Utah, which is a polite way of saying the region’s pediatric map has had a hole in it for decades.
The part that actually matters
Strip away the ribbon cutting and the light show (there was a light show, plus play tractors and a sandcastle rendering of the hospital) and the story is about families who have been packing suitcases to get their kids treated.
Intermountain’s own release tells the story of a girl named Judy, born with a cancer wrapped around her spine, who started chemotherapy at two days old. Her family left Las Vegas for months of treatment and still sometimes travels out of state for specialized care. Her mother, Tisha, put it simply: the hospital means Nevada families won’t have to leave their support systems behind.
That’s the quiet cost of not having a children’s hospital. It isn’t just the drive to Salt Lake City or Los Angeles. It’s the parent who has to quit a job, the sibling left with grandparents, the hotel bill nobody budgeted for. A children’s hospital in your own city is, among other things, a very expensive way to let a family sleep in its own beds.
The opinion part
This is opinion, so file it accordingly. A $150 million gift from a venture capitalist is wonderful, and I’d take ten more of them. But it’s worth noticing that one of the fastest-growing metros in America had to wait for a billionaire’s generosity to get a facility that cities a quarter its size take for granted. Philanthropy is filling a gap that public policy and the hospital industry let sit open for a generation.
None of that is Intermountain’s fault, and credit where due: they’re the ones finally building it. It’s just a reminder that in American medicine, the heartwarming donation story and the systemic-failure story are usually the same story, told from different ends.
For now, the kids of Las Vegas get a hospital. In 2030, hopefully, they’ll also get to stay home for it.
References
Intermountain Health. “Intermountain Health Receives One of the Nation’s Largest Gifts in Pediatric Care.” October 23, 2026. https://news.intermountainhealth.org/intermountain-health-receives-one-of-the-nations-largest-gifts-in-pediatric-care/
Intermountain Health. “Intermountain Health Breaks Ground on a New Era of Children’s Health in Nevada.” October 26, 2026. https://news.intermountainhealth.org/intermountain-health-breaks-ground-on-a-new-era-of-childrens-health-in-nevada/
KSNV News 3 Las Vegas. “Intermountain announces $150M Horowitz gift for Las Vegas children’s hospital project.” October 23, 2026. https://news3lv.com/news/local/intermountain-announces-150m-horowitz-gift-for-las-vegas-childrens-hospital-project
KSNV News 3 Las Vegas. “Raiders, co-owners pledge $25M to Las Vegas stand-alone children’s hospital.” August 24, 2026. https://news3lv.com/news/local/raiders-co-owners-pledge-25m-to-las-vegas-stand-alone-childrens-hospital
The Nevada Globe. “Horowitz Family Gifts Record $150 Million to Anchor $1 Billion Children’s Hospital in Southwest Las Vegas.” October 2026. https://thenevadaglobe.com/702times/horowitz-family-gifts-record-150-million-to-anchor-1-billion-childrens-hospital-in-southwest-las-vegas/
