Stephens Co. Hospital Continues Planning for Possible Wilkinson Center Addition

Stephens County Hospital is moving closer to possibly beginning work on an addition to its Wilkinson Center.

The Hospital Authority’s Building and Grounds Committee met on Monday to receive an update on the project from Hospital Administrator Ed Gambrell.

Gambrell said that the meeting allowed committee members to receive information about the bids that the hospital has received so far related to the planned project.

“We are not through, but we have a number of bids and our hope is to be able to come to full Authority at the meeting on August 17 to request approval to proceed,” said Gambrell.

Gambrell went on to say that so far, costs are lining up with what the hospital expected on the project.

“I think that the project will end up costing about what we had projected several months ago,” said Gambrell. “Having said that, there is in some cases a relatively significant variation in the bids, so we want to make sure everybody bid ‘apples to apples’ and that is what we are doing right now.”

If the project is approved by the Authority, Gambrell has said that he does not expect the project to take long to build once it is started.

Stephens County Hospital is looking to build four additional units at the Wilkinson Center that would fall under the facility’s current license.

According to Gambrell, each of the four units will house two people comfortably.

He said that the units will be about 1000 square feet and the addition will be connected by a heated hallway to the main Wilkinson Center.