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Construction teams are in the early stages of building the University of Maryland Shore Regional Medical Center on Longwoods Road just off of U.S. Route 50. And in a matter of weeks, passersby will see vertical progress on what will be the hospital’s six-story main tower.

“As part of the vertical construction, probably one of the first things that people would see from the road is the cranes,� said LuAnn Brady, University of Maryland Shore Regional Health vice president and chief operating officer.

The landmark project took two major steps forward last month — on May 1 the Town of Easton granted the hospital a building permit, and two weeks later, Route 662 (or Longwoods Road) reopened for traffic after it was rerouted due to where the medical center will sit. Those advancements allowed building construction to begin on time.

Project leaders and politicians alike have touted the hospital as a significant milestone that will improve the quality of health care for Eastern Shore residents. Brady and Shore Regional Health communications marketing director Trena Williamson said the new space will improve efficiency for patients and staff.

The new center will replace Shore Regional Health’s current one, a 244,000-square-foot facility in downtown Easton.

“We’ve been working in a space that has been retrofitted,� Williamson said. “Health care changes so quickly, and our current space has grown and morphed around those changes, and part of what has made this project necessary is that we’re stuck.�

CONSTRUCTION TIMELINE

Project leaders expect the hospital to open in the summer of 2028. Constructing the building is likely to take much less time than the events leading up to the hospital’s ground breaking.

In 2012, Shore Regional Health first applied for a certificate of need to relocate the hospital. Industry changes, fiscal concerns and shifting project plans delayed the timeline. But in January 2024, the Maryland Health Care Commission finally approved the certificate of need application.

“There was a little bit of ‘we’ll believe it when we see it,’� Brady said of how employees viewed the pending move. But when the commission gave the OK, the project hit the ground running.

Brady said construction will start on the east wing of the main hospital and then go to the west wing. Then workers will tackle the 60,000-square-foot medical services and outpatient services building.

By the end of this year, Brady said the east wing will be standing and there will be progress on the west end.

“A year from now, in May of 2026, both the east and the west wings will be built, and you’ll see all six stories of the building,� Brady said.

Whiting-Turner is leading construction.

WHAT WILL CHANGE

The project will increase the hospital’s space for storage, education, meetings and parking, according to Shore Regional Health leaders, who also noted that hospital staff had significant input over the past years into where departments are located, what rooms look like and more.

There will be 122 licensed inpatient beds — a slight increase from the current 118. Bed counts are dictated by the state through the certificate of need, Williamson said. The number of total beds will be 147, nearly even with the hospital’s current makeup.

While the hospital’s bed number isn’t significantly rising, the location of 25 additional observation beds will no longer significantly interfere with the emergency department space. Observation patients will be placed beside the emergency center.

“The dedicated observation beds will allow us to be able to be more efficient with those observation patients in terms of not taking up space in the emergency department,� Brady said.

And as for the operating rooms, Williamson says space and scheduling limitations at the South Washington Street location will be improved with the new medical center. Since the downtown hospital was built before robotic surgery, most operating rooms don’t have space for the robotic equipment.

“They didn’t think about robotic surgery,� Williamson said of when the operating rooms were first built. “Well, now we have robotic surgery, and that needs specific things. They need to have a larger space for that to operate in.�

“There’s a bit of liberation,� Williamson said of the space the new medical center will provide.