LONG PRAIRIE - The brand new medical campus in Long Prairie will be opening next week. Construction of the nearly $31 million facility lasted 16 months.

Dan Swenson is the administrator of the CentraCare Health-Long Prairie campus. He says the new 65,000 square foot campus has a lot of enhanced features.

It's going to be state of the art with all new technology.  We're going to be bringing in an in-house MRI, which right now we have coming in three days a week by truck.  We'll have two surgical suites, today we only have one.

Swenson says another new feature is a bistro, which is open to the public.

If you'd like to see it for yourself, there's a public open house on Monday from 4:00 p.m. until 7:00 p.m.

The hospital will open the emergency room, and transfer patients, next Saturday, October 14th.

The existing ER will be staffed, but we'll be bringing the new patients that come in down to the new medical campus.  Then on Saturday after breakfast on the 14th, we'll start to transfer our in-patients.

Swenson says the rest of the campus and clinic will open at 7:00 a.m. Monday, October 16th.

CentraCare plans to renovate the current building. CentraCare currently has about 250 full-time employees working in Long Prairie, and with the new medical campus, they'll be adding 10 - 20 new staff over the next year.

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