A busy Spokane Valley medical practice plans to construct a $6 million building a few blocks east of Valley Hospital & Medical Center to expand its practice, and says it will hire about 10 additional employees once that building is completed.

In the new building, Spokane Valley Ear, Nose & Throat PS will expand its practice to include a three-operating room surgical center and will expand its audiology and allergy departments, says Dr. Geoffrey Julian, one of the partners in the practice. It will hire the additional staff members for the new surgery center and expanded audiology department, and might add a couple of additional doctors to the practice later.

Julian says four of the five doctors who currently are partners in the practice have formed a company named McDonald Investment Group LLC to own the planned 18,700-square-foot medical office building and surgery center. The practice employs 21 people, including the five doctors, and treats about 2,000 patients each month.

Construction is to begin soon on the building, which will be built at a 1.5-acre vacant lot at 1424 N. McDonald Road, near where another practice, Spokane Ear, Nose & Throat Clinic PS, which is based in Spokane, is constructing a Spokane Valley clinic.

Spokane Valley ENT has occupied 3,900 square feet of leased space in a medical building at 1414 N. Houk, adjacent to Valley Hospital & Medical Center, for more than 30 years, but has outgrown that space, Julian says. The doctors have been performing the surgical procedures at Spokane-area hospitals.

Raymond Fox & Associates, of San Diego, Calif., designed the project, and Span Construction & Engineering, of Madera, Calif., is the general contractor, Julian says. He says the contractor will have a project manager onsite and will use local subcontractors for most of the work. The practice hopes to move into the new building by February 2010, he says.

Spokane Valley ENT will occupy about 15,000 square feet of space on the first floor of the steel-frame, brick-faade building and plans to lease out about 3,700 square feet of space on the second floor to other health-care practitioners.

All of the doctors in the practice do surgical procedures, including surgery on the ears and sinuses, cancer operations for head and neck tumors, and tonsillectomies, Julian says. One partner, who joined the practice last year, also performs a significant number of cleft-palate and traumatic reconstructive facial operations, as well as cosmetic procedures.

The practice's expansion and the added efficiency of having an outpatient surgery center were a large part of the impetus to build the new facility, Julian says. At the practice's new outpatient surgery center, such procedures will be less expensive than in a hospital setting and easier to schedule, he says.

"It makes it more economical for patients. You don't have hospital charges, so if a child has a tympanostomy tube surgery, for example, it's much less expensive to have it done at the office," he says.

In addition to the new surgical suite, the practice will expand its audiology department and its allergy treatment center, says Christa Copus, a doctor of audiology at the clinic. The new location will have three audiology booths for testing hearing. At its current location, it has one audiology booth. It also will have three hearing aid fitting rooms and a testing room that will be used to diagnose balance disorders.