HENDERSONVILLE, NC (AP) Officials with Pardee Memorial Hospital said Oct. 29 that work will begin soon on an $8.1 million expansion of Pardee’s surgical facility.

"This is space we desperately need," said Bob Goodwin, Pardee’s chief financial officer, of the 16,000 sq. ft. (1,486 sq m) of space that will be added to the 52,000-sq.-ft. (4,800 sq m) surgery building built in 1996. "It’s going to make greater amounts of service available to an ever growing population."

The expanded surgical facility will have four additional operating suites, increasing the number of those specialized rooms at the hospital from six to 10.

Plans also call for renovations to the patient recovery area.

Construction on the site will begin next month and the new surgical areas are scheduled to open in May 2005.

Pardee officials said the steady population growth in Western North Carolina has resulted in a nearly 40 percent increase in surgery caseloads during the past several years.

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