A sneak peek inside Marian Medical Center's new hospital

Posted: Jul 11, 2011 5:35 PM by Danielle Lerner
Updated: Jul 11, 2011 9:02 PM

After more than two years of construction, Marian Medical Center's new hospital in Santa Maria is now 75 percent complete. On Monday, KSBY News got an inside look at the progress.

The new hospital has been in the works since the late nineties. The $210 million project is double the size of the current hospital, and features nearly 200 private patient rooms, a new Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and state-of-the-art equipment.

The sights and sounds of construction are daily reminders that Marian Medical Center's new hospital in Santa Maria is still a work in progress, but the 219,000 square foot building is starting to take shape.

"Especially with the scaffolding coming down, it's really nice to see it as a real building," said V.P. of Real Estate and Construction Craig Miller.

"We have permanent power on in the building, probably in about a week-and-a-half we will start putting air through the building," said Michael Walsh, the project director with Kitchell Contractors.

Walking inside it is easy to get lost in the maze of floor plans, wires, tools and hundreds of workers on each of the four stories. However, over the next few months these areas will transform into private patient rooms, an expanded Emergency Room, a new and improved Critical Care Unit, and other upgraded services offering more comfortable and more advanced care.

The new N.I.C.U. will have more than double the beds available now, and administrators hope features like the Healing Garden and Chapel will help ease the pain often associated with a hospital visit.

"I think the public will find it will be a much better experience in this new hospital, as well as the patients, physicians and staff," said Miller.

The hospital staff is already training on the new equipment and learning how to treate patients in this bigger, much more technologically-advanced space. Construction is scheduled to be complet in mid-January of 2012 and the new hospital hopes to open to the public in March.

Once the new hospital opens, the current building will be used for outpatient services, office space and storage.