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Sunday, July 24, 2011

Hospital Construction Offer Lifeline

In a recession that has hit the construction industry particularly hard, Delaware has a building bright spot -- in the medical sector.

From north of Wilmington to Sussex County's coast, hospital construction is booming, creating more than 2,000 construction jobs and injecting hundreds of millions of dollars of spending into an economy still struggling to replace a moribund housing market.

Health care is a rare growth area in the struggling economy, with the U.S. Department of Labor last year projecting the field will add 15 million jobs this decade to accommodate growing patient volume and the aging population.

Fueling the hospital boom is an aging population and the need to replace aging facilities while housing new technologies.

A formula used by federal officials says each $100 million of hospital construction creates 350 to 500 construction jobs, said Tim Duggan of RSMeans cost-engineering research in Connecticut. By that formula, Delaware's hospital boom is creating at least 2,146 to 3,065 construction jobs.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's great news to hear that a sector of our economy is flourishing. The bad news is that one of the "riders" in obamacare is that all hospital expansion will have to approved by the federal government. Let them put a federal finger on it and it will get screwed up.

maddy said...

Hospitals are now in the business contraction jobs..now a days it's political business!

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