Morgan Medical Center recently announced plans to implement a $27 million expansion and renovation project at its 1740 Lions Club Rd. campus.
With this addition, the Madison hospital plans to expand its agenda of services provided and upgrade multiple sectors of the main building.
A groundbreaking ceremony for the new medical office building is scheduled to take place this fall, although a specific date has not been confirmed. The new 23,000-square-foot facility will allow the hospital to open new “multi-specialty physician suites.”
As CEO of Morgan Medical Center, Ralph Castillo is looking forward to the expansion, which has been planned for several years. He noted the project was delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We’ve known for a little while that we’ve had unprecedented growth in the hospital and services, so we’ve been looking at this [project] for a long time,” Castillo said. “Now we’re at the point where we’re moving forward, and we’re not necessarily adding service lines left and right, but we’re broadening the services that we do have.”
According to the Morgan Medical Center website, the facility’s expansion of services would apply to multiple fields, including physical therapy and rehab for both cardiac and sports medicine. The renovations for the current facility will include additions of a new OR suite, an expanded lab and pharmacy, and more ER treatment rooms.
Castillo noted that one of the main reasons behind the building renovation plans and installing an additional OR suite is due to the medical center’s “rapid growth in surgical services.”
“For instance, in surgical services, we have a full-time general surgeon on staff, and right now we have two orthopedic surgeons who do surgeries regularly here,” Castillo said. “We’re about to add a third orthopedic surgeon to do a specialty surgery, and then there are a fourth and fifth orthopedic surgeon who have voiced interest in coming to the hospital.”
Morgan Medical Center’s renovation and expansion project will additionally include technology upgrades and additions for multiple current resources, including cardiac scan, nuclear medicine technology, and an in-house MRI suite.
“When we’re doing cardiac procedures, we have another CAT scanner and CT scanner that can do the regular studies in addition to doing the nuclear medicine,” Castillo said. “Now we have a fairly new MRI magnet, but it’s in a trailer right out back of the hospital, and so we are going to build space and move the magnet inside the hospital.”
Overall, Castillo believes that Morgan Medical Center’s authority has always been driven by a goal to “make the hospital the best that it can be,” to serve the community. He hopes that the project will help residents avoid longer drives to access medical assistance.
“Morgan County deserves a top-notch hospital, and having a very modern medical office building outside of the hospital will help us attract doctors,” Castillo said. “All of these other things that we’re doing inside the hospital will help us continue to evolve as a healthcare institution and give us the ability to offer more to the communities we serve.”
Morgan Medical Center plans to initiate the construction process in October, coinciding with the groundbreaking ceremony for the new medical office building.