St. David's Georgetown Hospital spent much of 2014 preparing and planning for an expansion that would more than double the size of the hospitals intensive care unit, or ICU. However, as contractors Vaughan Construction began the project in the fall, structural issues were discovered, which led to a one- to two-month delay, said Hugh Brown, St. David's Georgetown Hospital CEO. "As is sometimes the case when you have a major project in an older building, you start tearing walls down and you find that [it] wasn't exactly as we were expecting," Brown said. "Where we thought the existing floor would be able to support all the weight we were going to put on it, we now realize we have to put some more pillars underneath it to provide more support." Brown said construction could cause some disruptions in the hospitals emergency department, which is located directly below the ICU. However, work is being done to mitigate disruptions, he said. "Were expecting in the early part of the spring, it is going to be a little disruptive," he said. "But I've got all the best minds that we can get together working on strategies that would have the least amount of impact on the emergency department so we can make all the progress we need to." The project will expand the six-bed unit to nine critical care beds, including two isolation rooms that will allow doctors to separate and treat patients with contagious diseases. The space will also include new monitoring technology equipment as well as room for five additional treatment beds as needed and a dedicated ICU waiting room. Brown said the project is in response to an increase in the hospitals number of critical care patients. Between 2011 and 2014 the ICU had a 68 percent increase in its number of critical care patient days, a unit of measure that equals one person in the hospital for one day. "Our peak volumes have now become our steady volume," he said. Construction on the ICU expansion is expected to be completed by the end of 2015, and Brown said doctors are expected to start treating patients in the new facility by early 2016. During construction, doctors will continue to treat patients in the hospital's current ICU. "Our current ICU stays full," Brown said. "It will continue to [operate] right up until the day we roll patients from that [unit] into the other one because the need just continues to grow." Brown said as the city's population continues to grow and age, St. David's Georgetown is anticipating a larger demand for services specific to Medicare patients. "The challenge in Georgetown has been finding a doctor who accepts Medicare," he said, adding that as the population grows, doctors are hesitant to accept new Medicare patients because of billing issues. "It's very financially challenging to take on new patients."