Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - Community Medical Center announced this week that it will be building a whole new cardiovascular center, expanding the current heart and vascular center that will be available in about two years.

KGVO News spoke with Bob Gomes, CEO of Community Medical Center about the project that will break ground in the fall.

“We're really excited about this new building and really supporting the growth in our cardiology program,” began Gomes. “As you probably know, we partner with Billings Clinic and have fantastic physicians that provide cardiology services and they've grown so much that we're going to build a new $17.9 million building for them.”

Gomes detailed the changes and additions the new building will bring to Community Medical Center.

“It takes a while for us to go ahead and put a proposal like this together and get it approved, but it's going to be a 19,000 square foot building that's going to be adjacent to our current cardiology clinic,” he said. “It'll include 10 new exam rooms, we'll add another Cath Lab, we'll have places for more diagnostic and support areas pre and post for patients and just be really state of the art, not only to take care of the people that work there, but more importantly the patients that we serve.”

Gomes said CMC aims to better serve the Missoula area, but also the surrounding areas of western and northwestern Montana.

“We have a two prong approach,” he said. “Missoula is growing leaps and bounds and we're really focused on our Missoula community. But we also service a lot of people in what we call our secondary service areas. A lot of these critical access hospitals in smaller communities that don't have necessarily the specialties that we do. And so, not only are we growing here from Missoula, but we actually do outreach clinics in a number of locations, not only with some of our other specialists, but mostly with our cardiologists, so that we can provide care there on site in their own community, and they only have to come here when they need higher end care.”

Gomes also referenced Providence St. Patrick Hospital with whom they not only compete, but also collaborate in many ways.

“I'm glad we're both here,” he said. “We have a great relationship. We compete, but we also collaborate. We collaborate on much more than we actually compete on. And it's really about how we work together to take care of our community and our outlying communities that we all serve. And so there are times that we take a lot of patients and Providence can’t and vice versa. But we try to make sure that we're doing the right thing by the patients we all take care of.”

According to their press release, Community Medical Center is the only hospital in western Montana that is an Accredited Chest Pain Center by the American College of Cardiology.

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