Today‘s University Hospital Pilsen is the largest and most modern medical facility in the southwest of Bohemia. As early as 922, Bishop Vojtech founded the Kostelec monastery at the confluence of the Mze and Uslava rivers, which became the cradle of medicine in the Pilsen region. Several hospitals were established and operational in the royal city of Pilsen during the centuries that followed.
The beginnings of the history of the University Hospital Pilsen can be dated to 1898, when the Municipal General Hospital of Emperor Franz Joseph I was established at the site of its present-day Bory area and in 1944 it had almost sixteen hundred beds.
In 1952 it was renamed the University Hospital of the Regional Institute of National Health. After World War II, another hospital was being considered in Pilsen. Industrial development had led to an increase in population, but unfortunately to a subsequent deterioration in their health. The Bory area was no longer adequate for patients from a large region in need of specialized medical services. Not even with the building of Pavilion 22 in 1973, the last to be completed in the Bory area, was any significant improvent to the situation achieved.
The reality was a need for the construction of a new complex. It was decided to start building on a „greenfield site“ in Lochotin. The winning design of the renowned architectural competition divided into four zones a complex which should interconnect internal, surgical and diagnostic disciplines at at a single site. Construction began in April 1979, and six years later, the first pavilion of internal medicine and related disciplines was opened. There were growing demands being made on the number of beds, while at the same time funds were lacking. The construction was then divided into six phases and the time horizon for completion was extended into the 21st century.
In 2005, the University Hospital Pilsen and the Military Hospital came under one authority. In this way the University Hospital Pilsen also expanded its workplace.
At that time, the modern pavilion of the Department of Gynaecology and Obstetric was opened in Lochotin in autumn 2007 and the Department from Slovany and the Department of Neonatology of the Bory area were both moved there. In 2011, the Department of Oncology and Radiotherapeutic (achieving the European standards), which originally housed the Fodermayer Institute, received its first patients.
In 2015 the construction of one of the most modern hospital heliports in the Czech Republic was completed at Lochotin, followed two years later by a multi-storey carpark.
The construction and development of the Lochotin area is not over. Gradual changes are also underway in the Bory area. This is the current position of the University Hospital Pilsen.
