(MURFREESBORO) Saint Thomas Rutherford Hospital is now making a vertical expansion at their Medical Center Parkway campus. Three additional floors and 72 beds are being added to the west patient tower of the hospital. That totals an additional 60,000 square feet.

St. Thomas President and CEO Gordon Ferguson said, "As the Rutherford County community continues to grow, it is essential the hospital expands to meet the healthcare needs of the growing population, and we are honored to be a community partner throughout this time of growth."

The vertical expansion will include finishing the sixth and seventh floors for immediate use, while the eighth floor will be shelled in for future expansion, when needed. The expansion also includes a two-story addition with ground level support space, storage space and four additional operation rooms on the second floor.

The expansion project is in partnership with Gresham Smith and Partners and Turner Construction and is expected to be completed by mid-year 2020.

The expansion project also includes the addition of the Clinical Decision Unit, which was opened earlier this year adjacent to the Saint Thomas Rutherford Hospital emergency department. The 25-bed Clinical Decision Unit is designed for patients staying less than 24 hours. This addition allows Saint Thomas Rutherford Hospital to care for patients at the most appropriate site and provides space for additional testing to determine the patients' needs in a more cost-effective manner. In total, the expansion project cost is estimated at $82 million.

In the last year alone, Saint Thomas Health has added 42 new physicians to its medical staff in Rutherford County. In the last five years, nearly 200 new physicians have joined, for a total of more than 400 medical staff members in Rutherford County. But then Rutherford County is the fastest growing area of Tennessee and Murfreesboro is the tenth fastest growing city over 100,000 population in the nation.

In addition to the expansion of our local hospital, Saint Thomas Health is in the early planning stages of developing an ambulatory surgery center adjacent to the New Salem care center.

ABOUT SAINT THOMAS HEALTH

In Tennessee, Ascension's Saint Thomas Health operates nine hospitals in addition to a comprehensive network of affiliated joint ventures, medical practices, clinics and rehabilitation facilities that cover a 68-county area and employ more than 8,000 associates. Across the state, Saint Thomas Health provided more than $127 million in community benefit and care of persons living in poverty in fiscal year 2018.

Serving Tennessee for 15 years, Ascension is a faith-based healthcare organization committed to delivering compassionate, personalized care to all, with special attention to persons living in poverty and those most vulnerable.

Ascension is the largest non-profit health system in the U.S. and the world's largest Catholic health system, operating more than 2,600 sites of care - including 151 hospitals and more than 50 senior living facilities - in 21 states and the District of Columbia. Visit www.sthealth.com.