By Tim Mastro

REHOBOTH BEACH — Beebe Healthcare’s new Specialty Surgical Hospital is opening its doors to its first patients on Monday.

The $125 million, 135,000-squarefoot facility, located between Lewes and Rehoboth Beach along Warrington Road and a newly constructed road named Healthy Way, was completed ahead of schedule. It is beginning operations at 5:30 a.m.

The surgical hospital seeks to use the latest technologies to streamline operative care for patients with a wide range of medical needs, from bariatric and breast procedures to orthopaedic surgeries. Surgeons will be able to perform both minimally invasive and robotically assisted surgeries at this new surgery hospital.

With the hospital dedicated specifically to surgeries, it ensures patients with scheduled surgeries do not need to compete for services with more acutely sick patients and emergency patients at a general acute-care hospital, said Beebe CEO Dr. David Tam at a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Thursday..

“I think when people come here for their procedures what they’re going to like the most is the fact that the care is integrated and that everything has been designed around them,” Dr. Tam said. “Everything from how their families get text messages from the surgeons in the actual operating room, right to the waiting areas, to the cafeteria, to the fact that they’ll have a room to recover in, rather than simply just some hallway or a gurney or something like that. But they will leave this place feeling with the comfort of being taken care of by the team of professionals who live in Sussex County and take care of themselves. Many of them are people they’ll see at the Wawa or the Acme or the Giant, and I think that’s the really special thing about Beebe Healthcare.”

Beebe first broke ground on the campus on May 15, 2019.

It completes an expansion plan announced three years ago that also included its South Coastal Health campus, which has a cancer center and an emergency department in Millville, and renovations to its Margaret H. Rollins Lewes Campus.

As Sussex County’s population continues to grow, especially among seniors, Dr. Tam said a facility like the Specialty Surgical Hospital will be of great benefit to the community.

“This is going to be huge for a growing and evolving Sussex County and will have an impact in three different ways,” Dr. Tam said. “Number one, it will provide an opportunity to provide more of these specialty services, the surgical services for people. Number two, it gives us the ability to work with our medical center in Lewes to really coordinate care. Then number three, it really is about developing this health care campus, because on this same campus, are our medical office buildings, a cancer center, a walk-in center coming up and the comprehensive breast care center. So this is the model by which we’re going to continue to grow Beebe Healthcare throughout Sussex County.”

Beebe will soon begin renovations on its Center for Breast Health and Tunnell Cancer Center. Beebe is also going to be breaking ground on a property in Milton for a medical office and work is starting on another office building in Milford while looking for more opportunities for construction in Millville.

“This is really just the beginning as we continue to grow further south and to the west,” Dr. Tam said. “We have a freestanding emergency room and our cancer center already. As we move further west into Millsboro and Georgetown and other areas, what people will see is that this building only represents the beginning of what kinds of services, what kinds of innovation we should be going out to do in all parts of Sussex County.”