The Cebu City Medical Center used to be hosted in a four-storey building and had a capacity of 300 beds which was declared structurally unfit and demolished after sustaining heavy damage due to an earthquake on October 15, 2013.[2]
Under the administration of then Mayor Michael Rama,[3] the building was demolished in February 2014. In June 2015, the construction of a new hospital building was approved by the Cebu City government. C.E. Padilla Construction was the contractor awarded to complete the first and second phase of the hospital building project.[4]
Operations temporarily moved to the Bureau of Fire Protection's (BFP) Region 7 compound with the parking lot, main building, and gymnasium refurbished as patient wards and other hospital facilities. The bed capacity of the hospital was reduced to 108 beds.[2]
Construction was put on hold in 2016 after Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña halted works on the hospital building due to issues with its building permit.[5] The hospital was still unfinished by the end of Osmeña's term in 2019. His successor, Edgardo Labella pledged to complete the hospital under his term.[3]
The completion of the new hospital building, initially set to be operational in 2016 has been postponed several times.[2] By August 2019, the structural framework of the building's seven floors were already in place[4] and the first two floors already had rooms.[5]
On December 28, 2020, the first three floors of the new hospital building were partially opened by Labella, Rama and other city government officials in a ribbon-cutting and opening ceremony.[6] Its outpatient department was expected to start accepting patients on December 29, 2020[7] but was delayed since its partial occupancy permit was still being processed through the Office of the Building Official (OBO) according to Floro Casas Jr., the city administrator.[8]
