Construction is underway for Mount Nittany Health’s new 126,000-square-foot outpatient center at Toftrees West in Patton Township.
Health system physicians and administrators celebrated the start of the $90 million, multi-specialty facility during a ceremonial groundbreaking on Wednesday at the 20-acre site.
“I think it’s an excellent opportunity for [health care providers] to continue Mount Nittany’s mission of providing healthier people, stronger community,” Dr. Chris Hester, Mount Nittany’s chief clinical officer, said. “It will be a state-of-the-art facility with updated technology, and it will be a better place to practice, a better place to care for people, a better place for people to come to be cared for, with convenient access. It’s a win for the whole community.”
Expected to be completed in 2024, the new four-story building will provide space for services including family medicine, pediatrics, obstetrics, gynecology, orthopedics, spine, physical therapy, neurology, ear, nose and throat, gastroenterology, general surgery, urology, endoscopy, lab and imaging.
It will have at least 60 physicians and providers and 150 staff members as Mount Nittany Health embarks on an expansion of its services.
“This is a $90 million investment in the community and caring for the lives of people in this community and surrounding communities,” Hester said
The building will allow the health system to grow its number of providers and services not only in the next few years but in the decades to come, Dr. Upendra Thaker, chief medical officer, said.
“It means several things. The first is having space for growth, not only in terms of the number of providers but the depth of services,” Thaker said. “As the health system grows the limiting factor is space. When you have a physician provider you need office space, support staff space and if you don’t have that you can’t bring more people in. Here, it allows us to grow not just for today but over the next 10, 15, 20 years, allows us to recruit more not just the number of providers but the services we can provide.”
Mount Nittany announced the project in 2021, when officials said a key reason for a new facility was that Mount Nittany Physician Group had outgrown its current 17 locations in Centre, Huntingdon, Clearfield and Mifflin counties. The nonprofit health system is expected to leave some of its existing locations and consolidate services in the new building while maintaining some other outpatient offices in the area.
“This facility will be a wonderful new home for the outstanding physicians and providers on whom our community depends,” Mount Nittany Health President and CEO Kathleen Rhine said in a statement following the groundbreaking. “We are excited to offer a wide range of services in one convenient location and to create the capacity to recruit more physicians and expand our clinical programs.”
The building will be the first at the 700-acre Toftrees West development, which will be located at the end of Waddle Road adjacent to the golf resort property. Development of Toftrees West has been expected for decades and in 2014 the Toftrees master plan was revised to indicate future development for the west end of the property that would include about 2,500 residential units — a mix of single-family and multi-family residences — as well as retail, restaurant, hotel and office space with a town center and parkland areas.
The outpatient center is part of a series of facilities investments for Mount Nittany. Construction is expected to begin next summer on a $350 million, 10-floor addition to the medical center in College Township that will have will have 168 private patient rooms, outpatient services, amenities for hospital staff and patients and a new parking deck.
Other initiatives in Mount Nittany Health’s facilities investment include the renovation of the imaging department at the medical center to create a newly designed diagnostic pavilion on the main floor of the hospital and the addition of a new inpatient dialysis unit.
The Joseph V. and Suzanne P. Paterno Women and Children’s Services Unit women and children’s unit and the clinical laboratory also have undergone major expansions.
“I think when you look at everything and put it together in terms of needing more services, needing more providers, community growth — we don’t just take care of Centre County but surrounding counties as well — we feel it’s the perfect time to grow and to expand,” Thaker said.
