St. Joseph’s $21M expansion in Bryan

BRYAN – St. Joseph hospital has broken ground on a 24,500-sf, $21 million emergency and trauma center expansion. The center will have frontage along Memorial Dr. and is expected to be completed in the first half of 2016.

The facility is the health care system’s biggest project in the past decade, doubling the size of the current emergency department, adding a second helipad and making room for a rapid increase in patients since its designation as a Level II trauma center.

"Our emergency and trauma department was built in the 1970s, so this is an expansion of that center that’s going to enable us to offer better amenities for our patients," said Melissa Shay, the vice president of marketing and communications for the hospital.

The new center will hold larger, more private rooms, and specially designed trauma rooms for procedures normally done in surgical suites, which the hospital says will save time and lives.

The hospital receives more than 90,000 visits to its six emergency departments each year, nearly 60,000 of them at the regional trauma center in Bryan alone — far more than it was originally designed to accommodate.

Shay said the area could see close to 24,000 new residents in the next five years, and said the hospital has seen an increase in emergency room volume over the years that mirrors steady growth.

"When you factor in the oil and gas industry and the biocorridor, the community growth is creating increasing demand for health care services," she said.