TWIN FALLS -- A major expansion for medical care is coming to Twin Falls.
St. Luke's will soon move the Magic Valley Medical Center from its current location to a new one, twice its size.
The hospital is just a few weeks away from being completed. When the designers put all the plans together for this, they had two things in mind: healing and comfort.
"Everything is about patient care, you bet," said Jeff Hull, Director of Architecture. "And then the clinicians that care for the patients."
For nearly two hours, Jeff Hull led KTVB through the halls, corridors and rooms of the new $238 million St. Luke's Magic Valley Medical Center.
The building is 712-thousand square feet, about the same size as the St. Luke's hospital in Meridian.
There is state of the art technology in each of the rooms.
Just as important as the healing process, is the colors of the walls, the design of the building and the landscaping. Even the lobby was built with healing in mind.
"It calms the visitor, the family member, so they can find their own way. They may be anxious because they're coming to the hospital, maybe they have a loved one in the hospital, so they may be anxious when they arrive," said Hull. "The more simple and calming we can make their experience, calms them down and should translate into calming the patient down as well."
And St. Luke's Magic Valley Medical Center has a piece of equipment that is the only of its kind in Idaho, a linear accelerator. The machine attacks cancer like a sniper rifle.
"If you can't stay state of the art, you really are behind the times and you aren't giving the best treatment to the patients," said Mark Lopshire, Dir., Mountain States Tumor Institute. "No longer do our patients have to go to Portland or Seattle or Scottsdale Arizona to get their treatment. Their family and our patients can stay here."
The hospital should be finished and ready to open by May 21, 2011.
The new facility will replace the current building, which was built in 1951 and remodeled in 1983.
