For many hospital CEOs, the defining challenge of the moment is capacity. They’re not just managing today’s demand, but preparing for what is coming next. At SUNY Upstate Medical University Hospital, that challenge is already the daily reality.
The Syracuse, N.Y.-based academic health system is operating over capacity nearly every day, and it’s preparing for a significant influx of patients tied to regional economic growth. As the only academic medical center serving much of central and northern New York, SUNY Upstate has long functioned as a referral destination.
Now, that role is intensifying.
“We are way over capacity almost every day,” CEO Robert Corona, DO, said during an interview with the “Becker’s Healthcare Podcast.”
SUNY Upstate operates three hospitals — a university hospital, a community hospital and a children’s hospital — with 752 beds total. The system is the busiest trauma center in New York for children and the second busiest for adults, a function of geography as much as scale. For large parts of the state, there is nowhere else to send the most complex cases.
That pressure has forced leadership to focus simultaneously on near-term operational stability and long-term infrastructure expansion, a balance many CEOs recognize.
$450 million — and the realities of growth
The system’s most immediate focus now is construction. The hospital’s original facility dates back to the 1960s and is ready for an upgrade. After visiting the campus and seeing the extent of overcrowding, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul approved $450 million in state funding to expand SUNY Upstate’s physical footprint.
The plan includes a new emergency department, a new burn unit — the only one serving a large portion of the state — along with additional operating rooms, imaging, laboratory space and parking infrastructure. Ambulatory expansion is also underway, with new sites planned to the north and east.
“I feel like I’m in the construction business because that’s largely what we’re focusing on in 2026,” Dr. Corona said.
The expansion could not come soon enough. Upstate New York is entering a period of rapid economic development, including a $100 billion semiconductor investment by Micron and a $3 billion manufacturing plant by Chobani. Together, the projects could add tens of thousands of jobs and significantly increase the region’s population by around 200,000 people.
Managing that growth without overwhelming staff may be the system’s hardest task yet.
To prepare for increasing demand, SUNY Upstate has appointed a chief wellness officer– a cardiothoracic surgeon scaling down her practice to support other clinicians.
“She’s been a driving force behind building some of the recharge facilities we have,” said Dr. Corona. “We have recharge rooms in both of our community hospitals and our downtown university hospital. We’re also doing a lot of wellness education initiatives and building some exceptional throughput operations centers.”
The throughput operations centers are helping with load-balancing. SUNY Upstate also brings in wellness speakers and is focused on implementing new technologies to reduce the administrative burden for clinicians. The system is also expanding ambulatory access points to bring specialty care closer to where patients live, while acknowledging that inpatient capacity cannot be neglected.
“We can’t do all of that ambulatory work at once,” Dr. Corona said. “We do have to grow our inpatient bed capacity as well as ambulatory. It’s a balance.”
Betting on technology early
Expanding capacity isn’t just about adding square footage; the health system is also looking for creative ways to leverage technology and boost operations. While many health systems talk about innovation, SUNY Upstate has built one of the more unique operational programs in healthcare: a functioning drone and robotic transport operation used in daily clinical workflows.
The idea itself is not new. Dr. Corona began exploring drone transport more than a decade ago, initially as a solution to inefficiencies in pathology specimen movement. At the time, the concept drew skepticism.
“That was, like, in 2014,” he said. “Everybody thought it was nuts.”
The system now regularly transports pharmaceuticals and specimens via drone between facilities and retail pharmacies, leveraging its designation as an FAA drone test site. They plan to start drone transportation to a new retail pharmacy the system is building about 50 miles away from their flagship campus. Flights extend well beyond campus boundaries, including routes tens of miles away.
“We’ve done about 6,000 successful safe flights so far,” Dr. Corona said. “We fly every single day between our institutions.”
What changed was not the idea, but the authority and persistence behind it. As CEO, Dr. Corona was able to align resources, talent and regulatory opportunity — hiring pilots, engineers and staff with autonomous systems experience. The program now includes both drones and robots, with a longer-term goal of eliminating the need for human handoffs altogether.
SUNY Upstate has hired leaders from Google’s autonomous machines division to develop 13 robots for hospital transportations.
“Our next step is to give the robots and the drones to communicate so there’s no longer a need for a human in the loop when we transport things,” he said. “It’s an exciting area. We’re getting a lot of interest even from the industry to work with us.”
Dr. Corona is one of 800+ speakers at the Becker’s 16th Annual Meeting, April 13-16, 2026 in Chicago. Click here to learn more and register!
