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As the three major cities of the Triad grow toward one another and approach the central town of Kernersville, the Triad’s major hospitals are reaching out to meet the need for health care in the area of Kernersville and western Guilford County.

“Part of our mission is to protect, promote and enhance the health and well-being of the community, and I think our area hospitals have definitely stepped up to do what’s needed to ensure the health of the public,” said Ken Carter, assistant health director for the Guilford County Department of Public Health.

He said that offering these new services in fast-growing areas “is a positive move for the citizens of Guilford County.”

Winston-Salem-based Forsyth Medical Center is building a hospital in the area, Forsyth Medical Center Kernersville.

The $84 million, 195,000-square-foot facility is going up off Interstate 40 at Macy Grove Road and Wishbone Farm Road and is scheduled for completion in 2010.

It will feature 46 acute-care beds, four intensive-care beds, four operating rooms, an emergency department with 14 treatment rooms and related services.

In the north High Point area, Greensboro-based Moses Cone Health System is building the Moses Cone MedCenter High Point, a 76,000-square-foot emergency center on Willard Dairy Road.

The 24-hour facility will include a 12-bed emergency department, along with a lab and imaging center with X-ray, MRI and ultrasound equipment.

The facility also will include an outpatient rehabilitation center and orthopedic office, a
LeBauer HealthCare primary-care office and other services. The $20 million project is scheduled for completion in June.

Also in the north High Point area, High Point Regional Health System and Cornerstone Health Care have begun work on Premier Medical Plaza , a 128,000-square-foot medical office building on Premier Drive that will cost more than $25 million. The facility will house physician specialties including family medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics, urology, gastroenterology and reproductive medicine.

In addition to its north High Point facility, Moses Cone is spending almost $5 million to expand the emergency department at its flagship Moses Cone Hospital in Greensboro. The project is scheduled for completion in May.

A key feature of the expansion is a 12-bed observation unit, where patients can be observed to determine whether they should be admitted.

Patients under observation currently must be placed in emergency-department beds or admitted, sometimes when they didn’t need to be.

In Winston-Salem, Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center’s Institute for Regenerative Medicine has received a five-year federal grant of more than $40 million to research and develop ways to use the body’s self-healing mechanisms to treat wounded soldiers.

The institute will lead a consortium, funded with an additional $150 million in cash and pledges.

The group will work in areas including burn repair; healing without scarring; head and face reconstruction; and limb reconstruction, regeneration or transplantation.

Baptist also is planning ways to address growth in patients in its emergency department and critical-care
unit. The hospital’s emergency patient load has grown by 60 percent in the past five years.

Baptist and Brenner Children’s Hospital also are exploring a possible joint venture with High Point Regional this summer that could lead to a new neonatal intensive-care unit at High Point Regional.

Contact Lex Alexander at 373-7088 or lex.alexander@news-record.com