Maple Grove Hospital Plans Expansion

The will mark its second year in the community at the end of December, but it won’t be the only milestone to celebrate. After two short years the hospital is already preparing to expand.

“We had always planned on expanding, but this is a little faster than we had anticipated,” Director of Guest and Public Relations Jennifer Krippner said. “The fact that we are moving our expansion up by about two years shows the need for the services we are providing.”

The expansion will be housed on the fourth floor of the building, which was built for future use, but hasn’t been partitioned into useful space. The $20 million expansion will increase the number of surgical beds from 90 to 130, but it will not add any services.

“Right now all of our services are busy,” Krippner said. “The emergency room, the family birth center and our intensive care unit see a steady stream of patients.”

Randy Alexander of Maple Grove was one of those patients.

“I had a construction accident at my home,” he said. The 37-year-old father of two was working on an addition to his home this summer when he clipped his hand in a table saw. His wife took him to the emergency room at the Maple Grove Hospital. “I was really grateful the hospital was just a few miles from my house, if it wasn’t there we would have had to go all the way down to Robbinsdale.”

For patients like Alexander, who live in the Maple Grove area, the expansion is good news. “Maple Grove is a growing area and it makes sense to have a first class hospital in this part of the metro.”

The expansion will have much less government red tape to get through in comparison to when the hospital opened. It took years for the state government to sign off on the Maple Grove Hospital, mainly because a moratorium had to be lifted for the hospital to be built. When the state did approve the facility, it allowed the hospital to reach 300 beds. Because the hospital will only reach 140 with this expansion, only the Minnesota Department of Health has to approve its construction plans.

“This will be a really smooth transition for us,” Krippner said. “We are really excited to continue growing.”

The hospital, owned by North Memorial and Fairview, does have further plans for expansion but right now its focus is the additional 40 beds. By this time next year, the hospital expects the expansion to be complete and in use.