The company has made a decision to move its tertiary services, which are advanced and/or complex medical services provided to more than 15 counties, from its main Parkview Hospital in the Downtown to the smaller campus on the north side of the city. The Downtown hospital will still operate as a community medical center, with all the offerings of a regular hospital. However, the company decided that it needed another location to reach more people, and the facilities lacked expansion capabilities, says Mark Hisey, VP of construction.

"The northern facility gives us better proximity to Interstate 69, better access to northeast Indiana," Hisey tells Globest.com. "Downtown, we have a 50-year-old facility. We evaluated the costs of renovating or reconfiguring the existing campus, and decided moving was the most cost-efficient."

The company joins many health firms in the state that are building new facilities. St. Vincent Health just opened its $42 million new medical center in Fishers, IN, and a $355-million Saint Joseph Regional Medical Center campus is going up in Mishawaka. Hisey says it's because of the boom in facilities half a century ago. "Back in the late 1940s and 50s, a government funding program provided capital for new hospitals. Now, all those facilities are getting to be older than 50 years old, and drastically need modernizing or replaced," he says.

Parkview North already features the new Women & Children's Hospital and the Outpatient Services Center and Comprehensive Cancer Center. Once finished in December 2001, the new Parkview will have all private rooms, Hisey says, as well as a trauma center, helipad, a full-service emergency room, surgery center, physician office buildings and room for expansion, Hisey says. Also, the property will continue and expand the Parkview Heart Institute.