A twenty-two and half million-dollar expansion at Laredo Medical Center will soon change more than the face of the building.
LMC employees were treated to lunch as officials there made the huge announcement.
They say the expansion will change the way healthcare services are provided to the community with much more space to accommodate the growing population, starting with increasing the emergency room from 28 rooms to 38 rooms.
"More and more people have been relying on Emergency Rooms and as I said our volumes have grown 12 1/2 percent and this is just a much more efficient layout.".
"Once we move into that new ER, we're going to go in and renovate that existing ER and create 18 more beds of Intensive Care. So we're going to move from a 22 bed capacity to a 40 bed capacity." Laredo Medical Center CEO, Tim Schmidt told Pro 8 News.
Officials say local subcontractors will be hired boosting the local economy with more healthcare jobs to come to maintain the additions.
Construction is set to begin in the spring of 2010 with completion in late 2011.