FREDERICK, Md. (WDVM) — Over the past year, Frederick Health has looked to expand beyond its current hospital location to make room for growth.

Frederick Health Hospital is the center of the regional health system, but even with at least four other satellite office spaces, there’s still a need for more room.

“Here on Seventh Street, we’re landlocked. We have residential homes on two sides of the campus. We have Hood College, wonderful neighbor, next to us,” explained Frederick Health CEO, Tom Kleinhanzl.

So the health system looked beyond the hospital campus and recently purchased the former State Farm location along Monocracy Boulevard as the site for the new Frederick Health Village.

The site is about 90 acres of land, which includes a 400,000 square foot building.

Frederick Health purchased the location for about $18 million without the use of donor funding.

Kleinhanzl says the Frederick Health Hospice will re-locate into the new site.

“It’s really office space for [Frederick Health Hospice.] They keep adding teams of care, so every time they add a team, we need more space for them to have a home base. We’re touching dozens of lives every week in the community for end of life care, which we provide in people’s homes, so this gives them a place to come back to,” Kleinhanzl said.  

About 250 employees will initially move into the new location. This also includes members with Frederick Home Health. This is a team that visits patient’s right where they live to deliver healthcare.

“It’s going to grow very, very rapidly so we needed space to handle that central monitoring and at the same time more staff in home care that can go out and visit patients in the home base setting,” said Kleinhanzl.

In addition to those resources, even more will be housed at the new location including the Frederick Health Call Center and components of the Information Technology services.

Frederick Health receives about a million calls a year. The new call center will be the centralized hub for all questions and requests.

The Frederick Health Village is expected to open by next spring.