The Capital Region Medical Center expansion is well underway, and hospital officials project a July completion.
The $37 million project, which broke ground in February, will increase space by one-third at CRMC's main campus at 1125 Madison St., adding approximately 115,000 square feet.
The expansion will house CRMC's outpatient facilities as well as consolidate the hospital system's specialty physicians, many of which are dispersed at different locations around Jefferson City currently. Those specialty medical services include radiology, ultrasound, mammography, respiratory services, a phlebotomy center, endoscopy, pediatrics, women's health, ENT (ear, nose and throat) and audiology, neurology and orthopaedics.
While CRMC offers all of these services already, the centralized location will improve access to all services, said Lindsay Huhman, CRMC marketing director. Once the CRMC main campus expansion is operational, many outlying offices that lease space will be closed.
"The biggest piece of this is the outpatient experience," said Martin Grabanski, CRMC director of facilities. That starts with improvements to the main Madison Street entrance, which will be shifted farther northeast.
"It's kind of a focal point and way-finding point to help the public figure out which entrance to come in. We're trying to give some ease of access as a point of arrival," Grabanski said.
The new outpatient center will include a centralized registration desk, pharmacy, coffee shop and gift center, along with three high-speed elevators near the main entrance.
"Everything we're doing on this expansion is revolving around customer service," Grabanski said. "If you're seeing your doctor and you need to get blood drawn or an X-ray, it's literally right there where you can get to those right away. If you need a prescription on the way out the door, there will be a pharmacy right there."
CRMC will hire about 30 new physicians and providers, including nurse practitioners, by the time the expansion opens, including 12 that already have been added. Additional space will be available for even more physicians' offices to be filled in the future.
"We do have the capacity to grow," Huhman said. "We will increase our number of employees as we bring on physicians because physicians need support staff."
Although an eventual 100 new jobs had been previously reported, hospital officials are not able to provide an exact estimate of additional jobs at this time, she noted.
Grabanski has tracked local participation, what he said was a CRMC priority, in the project's various aspects at 73 percent so far, but he expects that number to rise even higher.
"For the most part, we've gotten really good local participation. We're very proud of that," he said, noting some out-of-area providers were necessary for services, like elevators, unavailable locally.
Tentatively, construction should be completed around the end of July, with an early August move-in and opening.
"It's a pretty exciting thing for this area of the town," Huhman said. "It's neat to see investment here, right in the heart of the city."