Nobody wants to end up in an operating room. But when a person has to have surgery, they want to be in the most up-to-date facility with the best trained staff.

In Fort Dodge, UnityPoint Health – Trinity Regional Medical Center is taking a huge step toward making sure that surgery patients will find themselves in that very situation by adding a nearly $40 million new surgery center.

The project had been planned for five years. Construction is now underway, and the work is very obvious to anyone going to the hospital or even driving by it on Kenyon Road. It is expected to be completed in 2027.

The finished product will include five operating rooms, two endoscopy suites, and 24 pre- and post-operative rooms.

It will consolidate all inpatient and outpatient surgeries in one area of the hospital. And it will replace the current inpatient surgery area which was built in 1979 and remains essentially unchanged.

The operating rooms in the new center will be about 200 square feet bigger than the current inpatient surgery versions. And they will have the infrastructure, such as nearly 40 electrical outlets, to accommodate all the modern surgical equipment. The entire surgery center will have an automated heating, ventilation and air conditioning system that will keep the temperature and humidity in the range needed to prevent infection.

Best outcome, every patient, every time is the stated vision of UnityPoint Health – Fort Dodge, and the new surgical center is a huge advance toward meeting that vision.

The center will do more than provide state-of-the-art facilities. It will also help attract surgeons to Fort Dodge. Surgeons train with top notch stuff at America’s medical schools and teaching hospitals. They’re not interested in working in operating rooms that were built before they were born and haven’t been changed much since. But they will be interested in working in a modern environment much like where they trained.

Surgeons aren’t the only people the new center can help to attract. The center demonstrates that top-notch health care is a priority in Fort Dodge. That makes the community attractive to businesses and families. That commitment to health care, combined with the other high quality of life amenities, makes Fort Dodge and Webster County very attractive indeed.

To help pay for the new center, the UnityPoint Health – Trinity Regional Medical Center Foundation is conducting a campaign to raise $3 million. The campaign, led by Casey and Deb Johnson, has already raised $2.1million.

The new surgery center is nothing but good news for Fort Dodge, Webster County and the surrounding area. Those who planned and developed the new center deserve our thanks.