Inside Sanford Health’s Orthopedic Hospital And Hotel In Sioux Falls, South Dakota

Sanford Health improves convenience and care access for its rural population with a hotel atop its new orthopedic hospital in Sioux Falls, S.D.

Published: March 25, 2026By Brooke Bilyj

HKS/Corey Gaffer

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Sanford Orthopedic Hospital, Sioux Falls, South Dakota

As the largest rural health system in the U.S., Sanford Health (Sioux Falls, S.D.) serves patients across a 320,000-square-mile region.

Although dozens of medical centers and hundreds of clinics across this footprint support Sanford’s goal of providing care close to home, many patients have to travel to Sanford USD Medical Center in Sioux Falls, S.D., for complex orthopedic and neurologic procedures that require specialized equipment. Roughly half of the patients who visit this main campus reside outside the city—often traveling several hundred miles, even across state borders, to seek care.

“When patients are coming to Sioux Falls, it’s for a significant event,” says Andy Munce, president and CEO of Sanford Health’s Sioux Falls region. “They’re dealing with a lot of stress, so we wanted to make it easier for patients by taking one additional stress point out of the equation and not only providing all-inclusive care but also providing a place to stay.”

While there are other hotels across town, and even one right across the street from the medical center connected via a skywalk, the health system wanted to elevate convenience on its campus.

When Sanford began planning a new orthopedic hospital as an expansion of its existing surgical tower, it decided to plant a hotel on top of the 9-story building—filling a gap for patients who don’t require inpatient care but still benefit from proximity to their providers during recovery.

Sanford partnered with HKS (Dallas), engaging design teams from the firm’s health and hospitality practices to integrate two fundamentally different occupancies. The new addition connects to the existing surgical tower and adjacent children’s hospital to optimize efficiencies while establishing a bold new identity for Sanford Orthopedic Hospital, which broke ground in June 2022 and opened in January 2026.

“The patient experience is at the core of this project,” says Janhvi Jakkal, partner and health studio practice leader at HKS (Chicago). “In a rural healthcare setting, patients are coming from quite a far distance, so offering a place to stay right above the hospital provides the highest level of convenience, and that directly enhances the patient and family experience.”

Expanding a hospital campus

One year before the project broke ground, a master planning exercise with HKS reinforced Sanford’s vision of “expanding its main campus rather than adding disconnected buildings or growing off-site,” says Kris Denevan, vice president of facilities and support services at Sanford Health.

Connecting new additions to the existing campus infrastructure—which includes a heart hospital, children’s hospital, and several medical office buildings—enabled Sanford to strengthen operational efficiencies while supporting Sioux Falls’ population growth, which is increasing by more than 5,000 people per year, according to the local chamber of commerce.

Driven by the growth of the system’s orthopedic practice and ambulatory surgical services in general, the new orthopedic hospital expands Sanford USD Medical Center’s existing surgical tower—extending the building by 90 feet to the west to add 12 additional operating rooms (ORs), bringing the campus-wide total to 47.

The lower half of the 9-story addition houses the new ORs on the second floor, pre- and post-operative rooms on the first floor, and ground-level administrative offices, connecting directly to the existing building.

Considerations for building a hotel atop a hospital

Initially, the top three floors of the addition were slated for hotel space, but Sanford pivoted during planning to reserve one floor as shell space for future inpatient rooms—leaving the top two floors to create the aptly named Highpoint Hotel, offering a total of 56 guest rooms with views from one of the highest buildings in Sioux Falls.

In between the hospital levels and hotel floors, a 2-story mechanical space creates a hub for distributing electrical, plumbing, heating, and cooling ductwork throughout the building.

This space also serves as a buffer zone that absorbs noise and vibrations between the ORs and the hotel rooms above, with wall mitigation and a secondary slab under the mechanical units. “That was designed with purpose because the last thing we want is an overflowing bathtub in the hotel to shut down an OR,” Munce says.

Sanford’s maintenance team oversees these mechanical systems, which are built to healthcare specifications. The hotel, which is operated by a property management partner, has its own housekeeping services, with access to a ground-floor loading dock via a dedicated service elevator.

Additionally, the hospital’s strategic location on the existing campus creates “a fair amount of clinical and operational efficiencies so we’re not duplicating services,” Munce says. For example, shared registration and waiting areas on the ground level connect the new building and the existing tower, welcoming patients and families for orthopedic procedures and other surgeries.

Similarly, a shared sterile processing department in the basement supplies both the new addition and the existing facility. These shared spaces are undergoing renovation and expansion to accommodate the increased patient volume and slated for completion by 2027.

Balancing hospitality and healthcare design

The primary hurdle with this dual-purpose project was leveraging convenient connections between the hospital and the hotel while keeping operations and aesthetics completely independent. This required careful planning and constant collaboration between HKS’ hospitality and healthcare design teams.

“The synergies between the hospital and hotel are all about efficient operations, circulation, and service,” says Luis Zapiain, partner and global hospitality practice leader at HKS (Dallas). “But it stops right there. We needed to create a differentiation of identity between the two parts so families would feel like they were leaving the healthcare environment and arriving at a home-away-from-home that provided comfort and respite.”

Specifically, South Dakota’s Department of Health mandated this distinction, requiring a clear separation of access points between hotel rooms and patient rooms.

The differentiation begins upon arrival, with separate entrances for hospital patients and hotel patrons. Patients use the main surgical tower entrance on the east side of the building, which is also undergoing a renovation and expansion to accommodate the increased traffic.

Meanwhile, hotel guests enter through a dedicated entrance on the west side of the building. Although patients can take an elevator directly from the recovery room floor up to the hotel—or from the hotel directly down to the pre-op area—secure keycard access restricts hotel guests from ending up in hospital facilities.

“Once you get out of the elevator, you had to feel like you were in the right place,” Zapiain says. “We had two different design teams to make sure we were creating two completely unique identities.” Although the health and hospitality teams worked in close collaboration, they made independent decisions to select flooring, lighting, furniture, and finishes that suited the requirements of each environment.

From the exterior, the soaring new addition purposely stands out from the other structures on campus, with a sleek modern curtain wall that contrasts with the surrounding brick buildings.

“During the master campus planning exercise with HKS, we realized that we have a lot of different vintages of buildings,” Denevan says. “Instead of trying to match anything that existed around it, we felt it needed to be very unique to exude innovation,” reflecting the new facility’s high-tech offerings such as the state’s only intraoperative MRI.

Addressing rural healthcare needs

So far, most of the guests at Highpoint Hotel are Sanford patients and families who travel to campus the night before a procedure or stay after discharge for continued follow-up. “That was our goal,” Munce says. “Our primary purpose is to meet the needs of our patients and families.”

Additionally, the convenient lodging also serves the needs of staff, such as offering physicians a place to stay during recruitment events and job interviews as well as accommodations for temporary locum staff. In the case of inclement weather, the hotel even offers reduced stays for hospital staff who’d rather spend the night on campus than drive home. “It’s a nice employee benefit,” Munce says.

However, a growing number of hotel reservations from the community are proving the facility’s value beyond patient demand, with a nearby aquatic center, concert venue, universities, and other hospitals drawing overnight visitors.

In the future, Sanford may consider reserving a certain number of hotel rooms for patients to ensure the facility serves its primary audience, but for now, Munce says, “We continue to grow into the space, and we’re excited to see how it will mature.”

By bridging the distance between hospital and home, Sanford’s dual-purpose project sets a precedent for rural health systems.

“In rural healthcare settings, people are traveling for miles and miles to get care,” Jakkal says. “Pushing the boundaries to consider how we can be more efficient in providing that care is something we all need to be thinking about.”

Brooke Bilyj is a freelance writer and owner of Bantamedia (Cleveland) and can be reached at [email protected].