Bowling Green hospital's $42M wing ready for dedication

1/22/2010

BOWLING GREEN - The community is invited to tour Wood County Hospital's $42 million expansion on Sunday.

The hospital plans to dedicate the 100,000-square-foot addition at

1:30 p.m. and offer tours of the building from 2 to 5 p.m.

Hospital President Stanley Korducki said this will be the public's only opportunity to see the entire building before medical-surgical patients are relocated there on Tuesday and the first surgeries are performed in the new surgery center Feb. 3.

The Wood County Hospital Foundation raised nearly $2 million for the building project, which increased the hospital's size 50 percent. The addition includes 56 new private rooms, a new surgery center, a women's center, and environmentally friendly design elements such as a 15,000-square-foot "live roof" of flowering plants and grasses.

The hospital now is working on an expansion of its emergency department and renovation of support departments - work that is set to be completed late this year.

"The new building will impact almost every area of hospital operations, and almost all of the patients will feel the difference in better and more efficient services," Mr. Korducki said in a news release. "Not only is our new building aesthetically pleasing, but we have brought in the best in terms of new technology, new approaches to multidisciplinary care, and improved comfort and service for our patients and their families."

Among those who will speak at the dedication ceremony will be Mr. Korducki; Dr. Elizabeth Horrigan, chief of the medical staff, and Wood County Commissioner Jim Carter, who serves as chairman of the hospital trustees.

Visitors are asked to avoid the emergency department entry and instead come into the hospital through the front doors under the circular drive off West Wooster Street. A shuttle bus will take visitors from the parking lot to the front doors.