Providence Montana announced Wednesday it will break ground on a multimillion-dollar medical office building across from Missoula’s St. Patrick Hospital. Residents can expect to see construction crews in the vacant gravel lot at 600 W. Broadway this fall.
The former Safeway site will host a new outpatient surgery center, as well as several clinics currently located at St. Pat’s. Providence Montana Chief Executive Joyce Dombrouski said shifting those services to the new building should alleviate capacity issues at the main hospital caused by growing inpatient needs.
“It’s that combination of giving us inpatient capacity that we sorely need right now, and at the same time building a building for the future," she explained. "If we planned well and right, it will really allow us the ability to serve all of western Montana into northern Idaho and a little bit of eastern Washington for the foreseeable future.”
Dombrouski said the decision to build the facility came from a three-year master campus plan study that took local patient demographics into account.
The company also plans to increase the number of behavioral health beds in St. Pat's emergency room and the capacity at its behavioral health unit in Missoula. Clinic space at St. Joseph Medical Center in Polson will be expanded as well.