IU Health to expand Avon hospital in $83 million upgrade

Indiana University Health West Hospital in Avon is about to get an $83 million expansion—a move that will include 48 new inpatient beds and add another floor to one of the patient towers.

IU Health said Monday that hospital has been growing “by leaps and bounds” and the expansion will help it meet patient demand.

“In the past year alone, we had to transfer more than 1,700 patients to other facilities, not because our teams couldn’t provide them with excellent care, but because we did not have an available bed for them,” said Doug Puckett, president of IU Health West Hospital.

The hospital has 127 staffed beds, according to the American Hospital Directory, which collects information for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Last year, it had 7,487 patient discharges and patient revenue of $746.4 million.

The expansion will add a floor to the hospital’s three-story B inpatient tower and add two floors on the north side of the building, on top of the hospital’s operating rooms and catheterization laboratory. The project will expand functional spaces, including the operating room, labs, kitchen, cafeteria and classroom areas.

The IU Health board approved funding for the expansion on Friday, the Indianapolis-based system said.

It’s just the latest push to expand IU Health West Hospital, which is now completing a large expansion of its emergency department, adding five more ER treatment rooms, for a total of 28. The emergency department sees about 47,000 patients a year.

The hospital, which opened in 2004, is at 1111 North Ronald Reagan Parkway.

The final design work on the expansion is expected to begin in January with construction set to begin by next October. The project will take about two years to complete.