The expansion will add more than 137,000 square feet of new construction along with 50,000 square feet of renovated spaces to help meet the region's health care needs.
Hannibal Regional Healthcare System in Hannibal, Mo., has announced plans for a $61 million expansion of Hannibal Regional Hospital and the Hannibal Regional Medical Group's building.
The expansion will add more than 137,000 square feet of new construction along with 50,000 square feet of renovated spaces to help meet the region's health care needs.
Included in the new construction is a plan to build a four-story, 88,000-square-foot addition on to the Hannibal Regional Medical Group's building, which adjoins the hospital. The addition will be east of the existing three-story medical building.
Todd Ahrens, president and CEO of Hannibal Regional Healthcare, said the addition will allow the health care system to hire more physicians to serve patients.
"We are already very near capacity on space, so the additional office building will allow us to bring in additional physicians and additional specialties that our community needs," Ahrens said.
Hannibal Regional also will be adding about 49,000 square feet of new construction to the hospital. Some of the work will begin in October with the addition of a two-story expansion of the hospital's intensive care and progressive care units, which will be equipped with state-of-the-art imaging technology in the same setting where surgery takes place.
Ahrens said these "hybrid operating rooms" will allow imaging to occur immediately before, during or after surgery "so you don't have to be bringing in imaging equipment or take a patient out of that room to do that."
Once the new operating rooms are added, the existing surgery department will undergo a renovation. Six new surgery suites will be added with advanced medical imaging operating rooms.
Hannibal Regional also plans to make interior renovations to the hospital mall and build new entrances to the hospital and the existing Medical Group building.
Ahrens said preliminary construction work is underway. He said crews are building a parking area northeast of the Medical Group building to provide new spaces to replace those to be lost during construction of the addition.
Also, the receiving dock and support areas are being expanded, and major utility systems are being relocated.
Ahrens said the construction projects are likely to cause some disruption during the next couple of years for Hannibal Regional employees and patients, "but you can't grow without that disruption," he said.
"That's always one of the challenges with construction projects -- disruptions and interruptions and noise, not only for team members and the community, but for patients that are coming to us for care," Ahrens said. "So we're going to do what we can to limit those disruptions and limit that inconvenience."
He said the construction work will not result in an increase in the number of in-patient accommodations at Hannibal Regional Hospital, which will continue to have 86 hospital beds and 13 in-patient rehab unit beds.
However, he said the expansion will significantly expand the hospital's ability to provide outpatient services.
"A lot of care is moving into an outpatient setting" at medical facilities across the nation, Ahrens said. "So this will greatly increase our ability to take care of more patients specifically on the outpatient side of things."
Hannibal Regional Hospital has been at its current location since March 1993. Several expansions have taken place since then, including the construction of the Hannibal Regional Medical Group building in 2009 to provide better office spaces for the hospital's employed physician group.
"This building has served us well for those 24 years, but it's time to refresh and update and make sure we're the right size for the additional services we need to provide," Ahrens said.
"It's very exciting, and we're really looking forward to making sure we're doing what the community needs as far as getting their health care local."
Source: Herald-Whig
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