Community Medical Center Announces Expansion

Community Medical Center is growing. CMC’s Board of Directors approved moving forward with an $8 million construction project, with groundbreaking expected this spring. The project will include a new family medicine clinic, additional surgery space, imaging enhancements, and renovations to improve the hospital’s orthopedic and specialty clinics.

CMC’s administrator Ryan Larsen says, “We spent a lot of time evaluating whether new construction was needed and what our focus areas should be. We just moved into our building six years ago, and this was not something we wanted to rush into, but we’ve had enough growth that we need to expand. This will also give us the space to ensure we have room for the doctors and practitioners our community needs.”

According to Larsen, the clinic addition is designed to accommodate new doctors that will be coming to the community. The existing clinic was designed to handle a single clinic of 3-5 practitioners, but with the addition of MidAmerican Orthopedics and Sports Medicine and with additional primary care doctors expected in coming years, demand is exceeding available space. The new design will create a new primary care clinic and house orthopedics separately. It will also create a new physical therapy entrance.

The surgical expansion and renovation are driven by growth. “We built a nice surgical department around our traditional surgery needs,” explained Larsen, “but while we built surgical rooms that could handle orthopedic cases, the department must be expanded if we want to function as a true orthopedic center. We need an additional surgical room and much more space to process, sterilize and store the large amount of specialized items involved in orthopedic cases. This is in addition to the other cases we will continue to do, such as obstetrics, gynecology, ear/nose/throat, cataracts, other ophthalmology, podiatry, gastroenterology, and epidural pain relief treatments.”

Omaha-based Altus Studios have been hired as architects. A construction committee, made up of board, hospital administration, medical staff and community members will select a construction management firm this month. Of the $8 million project budget, $6 million is estimated for construction.