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UPMC Susquehanna seeks next level of care with expansion

It should be quite apparent to most people by now that hospitals both in the region and nationwide are in a medical care version of an arms race.

They either expand and modernize services and their menu of care or they are swallowed up by a larger medical care institution that will do just that.

This is not necessarily a bad thing for patients and health care consumers.

It actually can result in expansion of local health care facilities and services that might not happen in a bygone era.

UPMC Susquehanna is expanding again, this time to the tune of $113 million and two projects expected to be under way in the next several months. A $100 million expansion project will extend the UPMC Susquehanna Tower to the medical office building at 699 High St., which will be completely overhauled.

The four-story addition will create infrastructure for additional operating rooms, medical and surgical suites and critical care units. Those items will support advanced life-saving and rehabilitation services to provide full trauma services by 2020.

The goal for the local hospital is to be a designated trauma center. Those efforts began in 2016 and will be completed next year. In conjunction with that goal, six trauma and critical care surgeons have been recruited.

UPMC Susquehanna also is embarking on a $13 million renovation of the Cancer Center at Divine Providence Hospital that will become part of the statewide network of 60 Hillman Cancer Center locations.

Hospital officials say these additions will bring life-changing medicine here to the next level.

Which is the way health care institutions have to improve today in order to remain viable.

Our first and foremost hope would be that the expansion project benefits the thousands of patients who use UPMC Susquehanna for emergency and a variety of other medical needs daily.

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