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WellStar continues to expand in LaGrange. WellStar West Georgia Medical Center cut the ribbon at the newest addition, an outpatient facility at 106 Old Mill Road. The building will house primary care, outpatient rehab and lab services.

A large crowd wearing suits, lab coats and scrubs stood outside the new building on Tuesday to officially open the Calumet facility. Coleman Foss, WWGMC President, did the honors of cutting the ribbon to celebrate the opening. The event was hosted by the LaGrange-Troup Chamber of Commerce. 

The building is the first step in the Calumet area. Foss said the hospital plans to add more facilities in the medical park, including other service lines like pediatrics and cardiology outpatient services in the future.

The old American Home and Shield building has been completely renovated for the hospital’s needs. It houses a couple of primary care doctors and psychiatrist. On the other side is a rehab center and an outpatient lab, which Foss said should be up and running sometime next week. The idea is to provide the services that have traditionally been done in the hospital, in smaller and therefore, more patient-friendly buildings.

“That’s just phase one of three phases. We will continue to build out physicians offices,” Foss said. “We’ll build up as a radiology center and then the goal is to expand the footprint because we bought all the land that goes with it, and put outpatient surgery, outpatient gi lab.

Foss said that many hospital’s are moving toward this medical park system, to get patients to the services they need without having to go into a hospital.

“A lot of patients who are getting outpatient procedures don’t want to go into an inpatient structure,” Foss said. “For example, you don’t have to go up two stories to get an xray when you can go into a storefront type of environment and get it done. So this meets the need of making it more patient friendly and being more efficient.”