ROCKPORT — Pen Bay Medical Center (PBMC) will establish a new entrance and parking area for its Emergency Department on July 5 as it prepares for 22-months of construction that will nearly double the size of the department.

Construction will be done in three phases to ensure uninterrupted access to the Emergency Department. During phase one, which is scheduled to take 10 months to complete, the Emergency Department entrance and parking lot will be temporarily relocated to Wellness Avenue.

The new parking area and entrance will be located on Wellness Avenue between the Physicians Building and the main hospital building. Signs will direct patients to take a left at the first stop sign they come to when driving onto the PBMC campus. Additional signs will then lead patients to the new ED parking area and the clearly marked entrance to the ED.

The Emergency Department expansion is part of a larger series of major investments that PBMC, Waldo County General Hospital and MaineHealth are making to improve the community’s access to high quality health care close to home. PBMC will launch a walk-in care clinic in Rockland later this summer, and it is preparing a space in the Radiology Department for a state-of-the-art MRI machine that will arrive later in the year. Last year, PBMC opened its new Health Center, which brought together under one roof all of its primary care practices.

MaineHealth supported a similar round of investments at WCGH in recent years, including a full renovation of its Emergency Department in 2018 and culminating with the opening of WCGH Walk-In Care late last year.

Pen Bay Medical Center

Pen Bay Medical Center is part of MaineHealth, a not-for-profit integrated health system consisting of nine local hospital systems, a comprehensive behavioral healthcare network, diagnostic services, home health agencies, and more than 1,600 employed and independent physicians working together through an Accountable Care Organization. With more than 19,000 employees, MaineHealth is the largest health system in northern New England and provides preventive care, diagnosis and treatment to 1.1 million residents in Maine and New Hampshire. For more information, please visit pbmc.org.