King's Daughters details $162 million emergency department and imaging expansion; ED to open in June

Sarah Marks, president and CEO of King’s Daughters Medical Center, told the City of Ashland Board of Commissioners on March 11, 2025, that the hospital is nearing completion of a major emergency department (ED) and imaging expansion and a new main entrance.

The project is a roughly $162,000,000 construction program that includes a new front entrance, centralized registration, a family pharmacy, and an expanded ED with 86 treatment areas. Marks said the new ED space is 43,000 square feet, will include 56 private rooms, four trauma bays and four procedure rooms, and will increase ED treatment capacity by about 62 percent. She told the commission the ED will be operational in June 2025 and that the new main entrance will open to the public on May 12, 2025.

Why it matters: The hospital is the city’s largest employer and the expansion is intended to address rising emergency and imaging demand, add roughly 300 parking spaces close to the main entrance, and consolidate imaging services now spread across campus.

Marks said the overall building housing the ED and related services is about 200,000 square feet and that the hospital is acquiring new imaging equipment, including three CT scanners (one dedicated cardiac CT), two MRI units, five x-ray systems, two nuclear cameras and an ultrasound system. She said moving all imaging modalities into one location will improve convenience for patients and operational efficiency; full imaging relocation and operations are expected to take longer than the ED move and Marks said that imaging in the new space likely will be fully operational by July 2025.

Marks also described workforce and community programs: she said the health system employs about 5,500 people (roughly 4,000 on the main campus), that it budgets about $457,000,000 in salary and compensation this year and cited an additional figure of $115,000,000 for wages and benefits. She listed training pipelines the hospital runs or supports, including nurse residency and fellowship programs, an EMT program, a medical assistant program that has graduated about 60 medical assistants in recent years, scholarships for nursing and allied health fields, a HOPE high-school shadowing program, community health workers to address social-determinant needs, Meals on Wheels deliveries for Ashland residents and school-based clinics serving nine districts.

Marks closed by previewing an additional fiscal‑year‑2026 project: a new endoscopy, urology procedure and bronchoscopy suite to be built in the new facility’s basement. She said that project is budgeted at about $40,000,000, is expected to take approximately 12 months, and that the existing building is constructed to allow four additional stories of future vertical expansion.

"After two years of construction, we are on the final countdown to possession of the new building," Marks said during her presentation. "I hope you enjoyed your tour. From all of us here at King’s Daughters, thank you for your continued patience as we bring this project to fruition to provide you greater access to quality, convenient health care."