In April, Mountain West Medical Center announced plans for a $4.5 million addition designed to double the hospital's ability to care for female patients.

The new building will feature a modern maternity area, additional space for gynecological surgeries, a larger nursery, and an expanded area for viewing babies. It will offer labor, delivery, recovery and post-partum services as well.

The move was a significant capital investment for the hospital's parent company, Community Health Systems, and marked a major bid to capture more market share in the Tooele Valley, where a sizable portion of the population still drives to Salt Lake City for medical care. The hospital has experienced steady growth since its establishment in 2002 and now finds itself running near capacity for many services.

Hospital officials said the expansion was driven by market demand, particularly with regard to childbirth services. Tooele County records more than 1,000 births per year presently.

The expansion will be overseen by new hospital CEO Denten Park, who took over for Chuck Davis in October. Park has been pushing the expansion of several hospital services.

"We're offering services that were never offered here before, including cardiology, and both our catheterization lab and cardiology services were launched this year," Park said in November. "We now have Tooele's first-ever, full-time cardiologist. We have room for further growth, too, and we definitely see opportunities for the number of services we offer to continue to increase."

The new building will be located near the main hospital on the northwest side and will have a separate entrance and waiting room. The 14,000-square-foot facility should be completed by the fall of this year. Of the total cost to expand, $1.4 million will be allocated for state-of-the-art medical equipment.