Work on a new 23 million dollar hospital in Milbank is set to begin this month. Officials kicked off the project with a groundbreaking ceremony Tuesday.
The groundbreaking may have begun the most recent phase of the project, but the plan to build a new Milbank Area Hospital Avera has been in the works for a while. Jim Gesswein is the Chairman of the Northeast South Dakota Healthcare Foundation. He says officials have been working on this project for at least five or six years. He says the current hospital is facing a shortage of space. Gesswein says the project is important not just for Milbank, but for surrounding communities as well.
“We serve Big Stone with the outreach clinic,” Gesswein says. “We serve Wilmot, we serve Waubay, and also Revillo. And we do serve quite a wide area and we’re looking to increase our market share, and I think the best way to do that is have the right facility, the right personnel, the right med staff, and of course the right equipment. And I think we’ve got the makings of all of that today. We’re just going to improve on what we have and I think we’ve got a pretty darn good recipe today.”
Gesswein says earth work for the project begins this month. Hospital Administrator Natalie Gauer says construction on the 75,000 square feet facility begins this spring, with a completion date set for July 2016.