This fall, area residents will begin seeing the first signs of one of the larger expansion projects in the history of Lawrence Memorial Hospital.

Gene Meyer, president and chief executive of LMH, said work to demolish the 1969 wing of the hospital was scheduled to begin in September. Demolition of the wing, which is on the east side of the hospital and is the portion of the hospital closest to Maine Street, is the first step in an approximately $35 million expansion project that is expected to take about five years to complete.

The plans call for improvements to the hospital’s surgery, obstetrics and emergency departments, along with converting 60 semiprivate rooms into fully private rooms.

Meyer said officials at the city-owned nonprofit hospital were making changes to their campus environment in part because the hospital’s competitive environment is changing.

“People are knocking on our door from both the east and the west from a competitive standpoint,” Meyer said. “This is the sort of thing that you have to do remain competitive.”

Three hospitals – Olathe Medical Center, St. Luke’s Health System and Shawnee Mission Medical Center – each have bought property for possible hospital sites along the Kansas Highway 10 or Kansas Highway 7 corridors in western Johnson County. Topeka hospitals also have attempted to open physician offices in Lawrence in the past.

Joe Flannery, a member of the hospital’s board of directors, said hospital leaders were keenly aware of how important it is for LMH to stay current.

“Health care has become so competitive and so patient-oriented that we need to add these services, in part, just because other hospitals in the area are doing the same thing,” Flannery said.

The hospital also will be counting on the community to support the project, Meyer said. The hospital’s endowment association has launched a major capital campaign to raise $5 million from area residents to help pay for the project. It is the largest capital campaign LMH has ever undertaken.

“We view this capital campaign as an essential component to the project,” Meyer said. “We can’t do this alone. We’ll need the public’s help.”

Here’s a quick look at each of the different areas that LMH officials plan to improve:

• Private rooms. The hospital plans to convert the last of its 60 semi-private rooms into fully private rooms that house only one patient at a time. The conversion would mean the hospital would need to build an additional wing to house the new rooms, but Meyer said he expected the hospital’s bed total to remain near 173. Each room, though, would be larger, have better video and Internet technology, and have more couches, chairs and home-like furniture to accommodate families.
• Obstetrics. A continued increase in the number of babies delivered at the hospital has created a need for more rooms in the obstetrics department. The hospital delivers about 1,200 babies per year, up from about 750 eight years ago. The expansion would add six new birthing/recovery rooms to the hospital’s current total of 12.
• Emergency department. Patient numbers have increased in the emergency department. Emergency room visits have increased to 29,000 per year, up from about 20,000 patients eight years ago. Plans call for the 7,800 square-foot emergency room to be expanded by about 50 percent.
• Surgery. Both age and space constraints are creating concern with the current surgery department, which has six operating rooms. The existing surgery rooms are more than 20 years old. Meyer said the hospital was studying whether it would be best to remodel the current surgery suites or to build an entirely new surgery center on the LMH campus.