Construction continues on Pikeville expansion.An award-winning hospital serving rural Kentucky is undergoing a needed expansion funded by a $44.6 million Recovery loan from the Department of Agriculture.
Pikeville Medical Center – located in Pike County, among the state’s most poverty-stricken – is adding a new medical office building and a parking garage. In addition to providing examining rooms and offices for 23 primary and specialty care physicians, the 113,000-square-foot building will house outpatient surgery, endoscopy, and surgical support. The seven-story garage, with enough space for 1,000 vehicles, will be adjacent to the building.
While Pikeville Medical Center directly serves a local population of 68,000 in Eastern Kentucky, numerous rural communities within a 50-mile radius of the facility, including some in Virginia and West Virginia, have increasingly relied on its services, according to Pikeville city officials. Parking is a problem, as currently available spaces are filled up daily.
Artist's rendition of finished expansion.Noting that Pikeville Medical Center was named 2009’s “National Hospital of the Year” by the American Alliance of Healthcare Providers – beating out 400 other entities, including the Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, the Cleveland Clinic, Duke University Medical Center, and Vanderbilt University – officials also say that the expansion will allow the center to offer its high quality care to even greater numbers of people.
“This project is a prime example of [Recovery] monies being utilized for much-needed health care facility expansion in an economically depressed region of Eastern Kentucky and Appalachia,” said Tom Fern, State Director for Rural Development in Kentucky.
Project officials expect the new facilities, currently less than 50 percent completed, will be ready to open by December 2013.
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