Viljandi Hospital: securing €75M in EU funding and delivering Estonia’s newest hospital

Viljandi Hospital and Health Centre is a public hospital in centrum Estonia with over 1,200 employees, serving the Viljandi region around the clock.

Building a new hospital from scratch requires more than a construction plan. It requires a clear operational vision, a robust funding case and the capacity to manage complex EU procurement and reporting requirements over many years.

During the implementation of the project, a major challenge emerged. Significant increases in construction costs following the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, combined with supply chain disruptions, put the project’s completion within the original funding period at serious risk, threatening the entire EU-funded investment. As the European Commission’s Cohesion Policy programming period was coming to an end, the project team had to act quickly to avoid losing the investments already made and the progress achieved, while also identifying a new financing solution.

As the original funding could no longer be extended and the construction works were already underway, a new implementation plan and a new funding application had to be prepared under the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) to secure the completion of the project.

Civitta has been involved with Viljandi Hospital since 2018, with the engagement evolving as the project moved through each phase.

• Strategic planning
  At the outset, Civitta helped develop the strategic foundation for the new facility – analysing patient flows, staffing requirements and operational structure to define what the hospital needed to look like and how it should function day-to-day.
• Funding strategy and proposal development
  Civitta developed and managed multiple funding proposals over the course of the project. When the original contractor pulled out and EU funds were at risk of being lost, Civitta worked directly with theViljandi Hospital and  Ministry of Social Affairs to prepare a new proposal directly to the European Commission – securing €75 million to complete the construction.
• EU compliance and procurement
  Throughout the project, Civitta was responsible for ensuring compliance with all European Union requirements by managing procurement procedures for medical equipment, including new medical technologies, preparing the required documentation for the European Commission and ensuring that spending met the requirements needed to protect the funding.

Viljandi Hospital and Health Centre opened in summer 2025. In 2026 it received two major international recognitions.

In June 2026, it was selected as one of the world’s best new hospital buildings at the European Healthcare Design Awards 2026 in London, receiving a Highly Commended distinction in the Design for Large-scale Healthcare Infrastructure category. Shortly after, the International Union of Architects (UIA) awarded it an Honorable Mention in the International Innovative Design for Health Awards 2026, presented at the UIA World Congress in Barcelona – recognising it as one of the world’s most innovative completed healthcare buildings.

Through funding applications prepared by Civitta, the hospital has secured a total of €75 million in external funding. The collaboration continues: Civitta is currently supporting the hospital in the next phase by providing strategic planning for the Viljandi Mental Health Village, with the aim of identifying opportunities for new funding projects and preparing future funding applications.

1. Long-term client relationships allow you to add value at every stage: Civitta’s involvement spanned strategic planning, funding, procurement and compliance over nearly a decade. That continuity made it possible to respond quickly when the project ran into serious difficulties.

2. EU funding for healthcare infrastructure is about much more than the proposal: Managing a project of this scale means handling procurement, compliance, reporting and stakeholder coordination alongside the funding work itself. Civitta provided all of this as one integrated service.