A long-awaited expansion at the hospital is now open for business.
Jacksonville Memorial Hospital announced Monday that the two-story 36,000 square foot expansion of the annex on the hospital’s campus was completed on January 17th.
President and CEO of Jacksonville Memorial, Dr. Scott Boston says the project strengthens the commitment of Jacksonville Memorial and Memorial Health to the Jacksonville and surrounding area.
“This is really about being able to access medical care locally. To our local community, all the counties we serve, to be able to bring that care much closer to home. Springfield Clinic is going to occupy one hundred percent of this new space. They have taken occupancy on January 17th so we are starting to move into more of those offices.”
The expansion is attached to the north side of an existing 70,700 square foot medical office that opened in 2013 and is home to Memorial Care Jacksonville and Springfield Clinic. Boston says the new space allows for an expansion of more than just family practice medicine.
“One of the things we are most excited about this new space is the chemo infusion center. It’s a really state-of-the-art, really professionally well-done space for patients to receive that critical therapy. It should allow us to increase access to primary care, some of the medical specialties like endocrinology, nephrology, maybe some extra access to some surgical subspecialties like ophthalmology.”
Construction on the expansion began in 2020, and Boston says like most things during the pandemic, there were some delays.
“This is one of those projects that fell victim to the supply chain issue and the Covid pandemic. Really the project is probably about a year over what we originally planned for. We had multiple delays because of the pandemic and then here just recently in the last couple of months a lot of supply chain issues with getting those final necessities, office furniture, and stuff like that. This has been delayed a couple of different times so it’s very exciting that we get to announce that it’s open now.”
The new project also expanded parking to the north allowing for greater access to the building, as well as drive-up lab services which will begin later this year.
The project has also renovated an estimated 10,000 square feet of space in the original medical office building, focusing primarily on existing waiting areas and the radiology suite that Springfield Clinic operates on the ground floor.