San Diego County's busiest trauma center is expanding. Scripps Mercy Hospital has broken ground on a new building to house its emergency and trauma departments.
The $40 million expansion is being built in Mercy Hospital's emergency department parking lot.
When it's completed, the new ER and trauma center will be nearly double the size of the current facility.
Dr. Michael Sise is Scripps Mercy's trauma director. He says his unit needs an upgrade.
"We have crowded rooms," Dr. Sise says. "We need to be able to expand the space, be able to get more people cared for more quickly. So it's a tremendous step, in terms of increasing the quality and efficiency of what we're already doing very well."
The seed money for the expansion was a ten million dollar donation from philanthropist Conrad Prebys. The project should be completed by 2013.
