MISHAWAKA — Beacon Health System announced a pair of expansions Tuesday, including the construction of a new hospital on the border of Mishawaka and Granger, as part of an effort to expand its geographic footprint.
In Mishawaka, Beacon Health will build a new “convenient care” hospital with a full emergency department. The new 32,800-square-foot facility will be built on the north side of Beacon Parkway, immediately off the Indiana Toll Road’s Mishawaka exit and directly across from Beacon Health & Fitness.
Beacon also will add the Community Hospital of Bremen to its network, pending final approval.
Construction of the new one-story, $25.8 million facility will begin this summer, and is expected to be completed by summer 2019. Called “Beacon Granger Hospital,” the new facility will lie just on the border of Mishawaka and Granger, technically in the city of Mishawaka.
A step up from Beacon’s existing urgent care clinics on Granger’s Main Street and Mishawaka’s Ireland Road, the new hospital will include eight inpatient beds and a full complement of imaging and diagnostic equipment.
But Kreg Gruber, CEO of Beacon Health System, said the majority of visits to the new hospital will be for outpatient treatment.
“We see somewhere around 55,000 to 60,000 ER visits a year,” Gruber said. “Fifteen to 18 percent of those are inpatient admitted. So it’s a small percentage that end up as an inpatient. The vast majority go home.”