North Texas Medical Center is starting work on the first building in a long term expansion project that is excepted to bring advanced medical treatments and additional physicians to the hospital.

Board members and Chief Executive Officer Steven Porter posed for photos during a groundbreaking ceremony Wednesday just north of the hospital’s main building on Hospital Boulevard near Highway 82.

At a media reception following the groundbreaking, board president Dave Sanders said the project should address an issue Cooke County shares with the rest of the nation — a shortage of doctors.

“Having this type of building available...will help greatly in our (physician) recruiting process,” he said.

The new building will house an oncology center, doctor’s offices and NTMC’s home health care service which is currently located in a medical plaza on O’Neal Street.

NTMC Marketing Director Gayla Blanton said the board has been working out the details of the $1.1 million project for several months.

The board voted to go ahead with construction at its April 22 meeting, she noted.

NTMC officials expect the building to be completed by December with the work scheduled to be done by JBarS Construction of Era.

Owners John and Suzette Straughn were also on hand for the reception.

Straughn said he has 25 years of experience in construction and has worked all phases of the building business.

The company is also set to build several motels and a project for East Central College in Ada, Okla.

NTMC’s chief executive officer Steven Porter said the building is part of an eight to nine year master plan to expand the hospital’s campus.

The hospital also has future plans including extending the length of the hospital’s surgery facility and erecting a three to four-story medical tower, he said.

Hospital officials say they are pleased that the project is being paid for with money from the hospital’s operating fund.

The operating fund contains revenue derived from patient services and is not linked to taxpayer money, Blanton said.

The new building is expected to be a 10,000 square foot structure. Roughly half of the building is scheduled to become the medical center’s new cancer center — a development that Blanton said should make life easier for Cooke County cancer patients by placing more cancer treatment options closer to home.

She said the hospital currently provides some cancer treatments including a limited amount of chemotherapeutic services, but that patients who require radiation therapy are compelled to go outside of the county for treatment.

That should change once the cancer center is completed, she said.

The center will also contain a smaller structure to house equipment for the radiation therapy.

“The cancer center will have an adjunct building where the linear accelerator is,” she noted. “This will be an offshoot of the main building.”

The linear accelerator will be housed inside a vault to prevent radioactive substances from leaking into the environment, and the two buildings should fit together “seamlessly” Porter said.

Oncologist Tahir Rana — who is currently with Denton Cancer Center — is expected to head up NTMC’s cancer center. Blanton said physicians who set up practices at the new cancer center are also expected to help fund some of the construction costs for the facility.

Increasing the size of NTMC has apparently been on the minds of hospital administration and board members for some time.

A planning committee made up of NTMC board members created a site plan to build additional structures on the hospital’s 52-acre campus, Blanton said.

These include a family practice complex and a wellness center.

“We’re trying to look to the future...so that as we need buildings and extra space, it’s already planned out,” she said.

Board member Jerry Parr said the expansion projects are possible because the hospital is in “great shape financially” — a fact Blanton attributes to readjustments made during Porter’s tenure with NTMC.