Our Town Aurora: New Surgical Wing
*Disable your popup player to view video.

Aurora's memorial community hospital is growing! They'll soon open a beautiful new $4.5 million surgical wing.

Finally, the medical staff has some elbow room.

"We were not able with the existing space and temperature and humidity control and those types of things and our master facility planning identified surgery as a huge priority that we needed to do to offer the services that the community needs," said Diane Keller, CEO.

Doctors have performed surgery in cramped quarters since 1964.

"My staff is very excited. Of course, we're working in a one-room OR and we have equipment that doesn't have any place to be stored, what we do have is old and we're just really excited about doubling our space, being able to increase our numbers for surgical procedures," said Cindy Erb, OR supervisor.

It's not just the two new large operating rooms -- there's going to be 15,000 square feet of promising medical opportunities.

"This is our new laboratory space and the space is probably about three times the space we had in our existing laboratory," Keller said.

With eight new private pre-op and post-op rooms for patient care this is a major upgrade for the people in and around Aurora.

"We always felt like we gave very good care. If we did not feel like we could give the best care, we would refer on. Because that's important to us -- that people got the best care possible, and in building this that will allow some of those patients that used to go out of town or out of county for services to be able to stay locally and get the same high quality services they would have in the larger cities," Keller said.

This is just the first of three phases of growth that are planned for memorial community health.

"But it's the most important phase. It's where we needed to start because it's the most urgent need that we had identified. By building this, it provides some space within the core of the facility in order to do some remodeling for some of the other needs that have been identified. So we're just thrilled that we are able to do this," she said.

Keller said they hope to have the new wing up and running by and they are planning a formal grand opening to take place in July.