$53 Million Hospital Expansion Under Way

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. — Officials broke ground on a $53 million expansion program For Wilkes-Barre General Hospital. The expansion will double the size of the hospital’s existing emergency room to 30,000 square feet as well as significantly expand the size of the current heart and vascular institute tower. The new building will connect to the existing radiation and oncology buildings.

The ground breaking comes 18 months after Wilkes-Barres General Hospital was sold to Community Health Systems Inc., which promised to invest $135 million in capital improvements over its first decade of ownership. The expansion project is scheduled to be completed by 2012 and will include further development of the hospital, with a cancer center, new parking garage and additional physician recruitment.

To accommodate construction, the existing Medical Arts Building and the Mendelssohn Building were razed in May and a handful of houses the hospital purchased will be torn down to make way for a parking area. 

The new ER will be 30,000 square feet, more than double the size of the current one. The project is slated to be completed in August 2012 and is being handled by Layton Construction of Sandy, Utah.