Inside the new Sanford Center for Digestive Health

The new Medical Building 1 on the main Sanford Health campus in Sioux Falls is just a few months away from opening.

In tonight’s Your Money Matters, we have the first inside look at progress on the hospital and what it will mean for digestive health care in KELOLAND.

“The procedure rooms are going to be state of the art, the equipment is going to be state of the art, we have simulation machines that will be state of the art,” Dr. Jeff Murray, the Director of Sanford’s GI Fellowship Program said.

The Sanford Center for Digestive Health will take up the entire 45,000 square foot fifth floor of Sanford’s new Medical Building 1.

“One of the first floors to have the clinic space, the procedural space all on the same floor,” Dr. Murray said.

It will also include the state’s first gastroenterology fellowship program beginning in July 2025 that will eventually have six specialists training every year.

“When you look at what’s going on in the country right now, by 2025, we’ll be down 1600 gastroenterologists in the nation. It’s imperative that we have a training program to train these individuals with the hope that we can retain them,” Dr. Murray said.

Along with adding space for a new digestive health center, this medical building one is also about providing some much-needed parking for the entire Sanford Health campus.

“We’ve got a little over 400 parking spaces on the 1st four levels,” Sanford Health Sioux Falls Director of Planning and Construction Eric Kinghorn said.

Patients visiting any building at Sanford Health can use the new covered parking garage and access all buildings on campus through underground, climate controlled tunnels.

“Provide cover for vehicles and patients can access the building without having to be in the inclement weather so it provides that shelter and easy access to the clinic,” Kinghorn said.

So for now, when the building opens this summer it will be used for parking and any digestive health patients, with the intention of adding more space to Sanford’s campus in the future.

“There can be a 6th, 7th and 8th floor built. We have not decided on what will occupy those yet, but eventually, probably very soon, will be built out,” Kinghorn said.

Construction on the Sanford Center for Digestive Health will wrap up by June with the hospital and clinic opening to patients by July 15th. View the Story on KELOLAND.