Evidence of Lawrence Memorial Hospital's ongoing upgrades are difficult to miss at the hospital, 325 Maine. Aside from continued construction elsewhere on campus is this sign in the atrium, where LMH officials welcomed members of the community Monday for a reception. The sign shows a timeline that ends with the planned addition of surgical suites at the northern end of the hospital, to open in early 2009.

Opening a new emergency room, expanding a growing maternity center and adding skilled and caring personnel to the hospital staff and rosters of health care providers during the past year all come with cause for celebration at Lawrence Memorial Hospital, the operation’s leader said Monday.

But that doesn’t mean the work is over.

While lauding the hospital and its physicians, nurses, support staff, volunteers, trustees and everyone else involved in its success, President and Chief Executive Officer Gene Meyer cautioned that there remains no time for complacency.

Continued “extreme volatility” in the health care industry – through ever-increasing competition, rising costs, declining reimbursements and looming retirements of large numbers of caregivers – will challenge the hospital in the coming year and those ahead, Meyer said Monday, during a presentation at the hospital.

“Now, taking into consideration the next five to seven years, LMH needs to make cautious, conservative decisions to serve our community, and those around us,” Meyer said. “This will not be easy.”

But members of the hospital’s management team are up to the task, he said, and Monday evening’s Report to the Community and Reception gave many of them and others an opportunity to laud accomplishments from 2007 and look forward to 2008 and into early 2009.

During the past year, the hospital opened its new emergency room, complete with 23 private rooms and other features designed to improve efficiency and service for people needing immediate help.

Joe Flannery, chairman of the hospital’s board of trustees, was happy to see the new department open in March.

“I’m really glad we got it completed just in time to handle a couple of patient surges caused by Lawrence celebrating some special KU basketball victories,” Flannery said, drawing welcome laughter from several dozen people assembled in the hospital’s auditorium, many of them fans of the Jayhawks and their national championship.

Among the projects coming up next: construction of new surgery suites. The new center, which will take the place of the old emergency room and include an addition, will start with six suites and leave room for two more. The project is expected to be finished in early 2009.

The maternity center – now known as the Family Birthing Center – already has its new, expanded rooms. Now crews are remodeling the old space, a job expected to be finished by the end of summer.

By the time it’s all done, the hospital will have spent

$45 million on upgrades, expansions and other work, projects made possible because of more than 2,000 businesses, organizations and individuals who together committed a record $8.1 million toward the hospital’s capital campaign.

“Our job now is pretty easy,” said Stan Zaremba, president of the LMH Endowment Association. “All we have to do is go out and tell everyone what a wonderful place we have here.”