On Thursday night, Sammy Jackson, chairman of the hospital’s board of commissioners, sprang the news at a dinner before the board’s monthly meeting. Raising a plastic cup filled with sparkling grape juice, he led a toast to the hospital’s future.

“The best is yet to be,” Jackson said. “It’s going to get better.”

The Clayton Medical Center will be located on 32 acres near the intersection of Amelia Church Road and N.C. 42. Hospital officials picked the site because it is near the future U.S. 70 bypass of Clayton.

Plans for the center include a 24-hour emergency room, a diagnostic imaging service, a lab and two outpatient surgery rooms. The operating rooms would be relocated from The Summit Surgical Center, a building the hospital leases on U.S. 70 in Clayton.

Kevin Rogols, the hospital’s chief administrator, called the Clayton project the “beginning of an evolution to create a locally owned health care system to serve Johnston County.” He said the Clayton market was growing so fast that Johnston Memorial couldn’t ignore it.

The hospital’s application for a certificate of need was unopposed. But Rogols thinks it might have drawn competition had the hospital waited to file even a few months later.

The application required long hours of legwork and research, and dotting I’s and crossing T’s, he said. “We debated whether we’d get it in on time,” Rogols said. “We had our fingers crossed. We knew we had one shot.”

The 51,000-square-foot medical center is part of a $115 million capital expansion plan.

Last month, construction began on a central energy plant for the main hospital campus in Smithfield. In November, the hospital will seek bids on a five-story patient tower and a major renovation of the existing building. At the same time, the hospital will also seek bids for the medical center.

Plans are to break ground on the projects in January.

In the meantime, the hospital is recruiting more doctors, Rogols said. The need was identified in a survey of community leaders and county residents.

To make room for new practices, the hospital plans to build a two-story medical office with 40,000 square feet — twice the size of an original plan. Rogols said the hospital has already had inquiries for 15,000 square feet.

This information was cited from the Herald Staff Reporter. For more information go to: http://www.theherald-nc.com/111/story/3570.htm