Hospital updating and expanding

WORLAND – After the culmination of several years of preparation, the Hot Springs County Memorial Hospital held a groundbreaking ceremony Tuesday afternoon, to highlight the start of bringing the hospital up-to-date and ready for future medical needs.

“It’s taking 1958 and bringing it up to 2018,” Hot Spring County Memorial Hospital Marketing Director John Gibbel said. He added that the target date for completion is December 2020

The $16.4 million project which will officially begin in December, starting with creating a new emergency room entrance, should not affect the services already provided by the hospital. Gibbel stated that the construction will be done in phases to avoid any interruptions. “As we build new functional areas we won’t tear down or stop using an existing area until the new one is ready to go,” Gibbel said.

Along with work to the emergency department, there will be two brand new emergency rooms, brand new obstetrics suites and brand new patient rooms. “We are not going to have more rooms but we will have up-to-date rooms. We are currently a 25-bed critical access hospital. We are going down to a 15-bed facility, but it doesn’t mean that we can’t put more than one person in a room if we absolutely had to.

Gibbel said. “We are going to be a completely modernized, modern standard-of-care facility where all the rooms will have bathrooms with showers, the OB suites will have the showers and additional facilities also,” he added.

According to a press release, Hot Springs County Memorial Hospital is a 25-bed Critical Access Hospital that provides state of the art equipment operated by trained professionals. They own and operate Red Rock Family Practice in Thermopolis, and the Big Horn Clinic in Basin.