Construction began yesterday on a new $46 million outpatient facility that will provide "one-stop shopping" for patients at the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center.

In the new building, related departments will be located in central clinic areas to more easily examine different aspects of patient problems, Hershey spokesman Sean Young said.

"The last thing you want to do is have to navigate a large hospital and lots of locations to get all of the services you need," Young said.

The new building, set to open in January 2008, will be two stories tall and add 165,000 square feet to Hershey's facilities.

Departments of neurosurgery, neurology, radiology and rehabilitation, as well as the Penn State Hershey Breast Program and imaging facilities will be under the same roof once the building is complete.

Young said Hershey expects 150,000 patients to use the new building in its first year.

The outpatient facility will be a "boon" to his department, chairman of the department of neurosurgery Dr. Bob Harbaugh said.

"It's going to give us a lot more space for our faculty, nurses, residents and physician's assistants," he said.

He said the new clinic will be more convenient both for patients and doctors.

"Right now neurology sees patients at various times in various clinics, both on this campus and some outreach clinics in the area," Harbaugh said. "We'd try to arrange the clinic so that all of the associated subspecialty disciplines could be there at the same time."

Young said Hershey has seen an increase of more than 200,000 patients a year in the past five years and that Pennsylvania's expanding population, especially in the senior citizen demographic, was one of the main motivations for the construction of the new facility.

"Pennsylvania has the second largest number of senior citizens of any state in the country, second to Florida," he said.

The new outpatient facility represents one of a number of construction projects at the Medical Center.

Construction is already underway on a new parking garage, research center, fitness center and renovated student housing for the Penn State College of Medicine.

The parking garage will accommodate 1,305 new spaces and 24 surface spaces. The garage may include 700 additional spaces in the future.

Rushton said the fitness center would include an audio/visual room, a conference center, new fitness facilities and workout and aerobic machine space. A new parking lot will also serve the facility.

Young added that plans for a new cancer center as well as a children's hospital at Hershey are also in the progress.

Construction on the cancer institute is slated to begin in December.