Tower for El Paso Sierra Providence East

EL PASO – Sierra Providence East Medical Center will begin a $67 million expansion of its facility in December.

The Tenet Healthcare Corp. will construct a new four-story tower with more than 145,000 sf that will add 30 surgical beds and 30 medical beds. A new emergency room will increase 21 beds to 32. When the hospital opened in 2008, it had 120 doctors. Now the count is 350.

The medical office building next door to the hospital is at 85 percent capacity. Since the hospital opened four years ago, admissions have grown 24 percent — with 50,000 visits to the ER this year.

In 2016, a new 135-bed Beaumont Army Medical Center will open. The nearly $1 billion hospital will be on a 270-acre site at Loop 375 and Spur 601, on the eastern edge of Fort Bliss.

Read more at the El Paso Times.