The Dayton area’s newest hospital Soin Medical Center opened a year ago, but it is already unlocking unused patient floor space earlier than expected in response to growing patient volumes.

Health system Kettering Health Network opened February 2012 the Indu and Raj Soin Medical Center in Beavercreek.

During hospital construction, two patient floors were set aside for future expansion. The hospital is licensed for 95 inpatient beds, and those dedicated to medical and surgical patients have occupancy rates reaching more than 80 percent, hospital executives said.

Crews started work January this year to build out the fourth floor with 32 private medical/surgical patient rooms, expected to open in July. A fifth patient floor still sits empty for future use.

“We’re still seeing growth in this corridor,” said Terry Burns, president of Soin Medical and Xenia’s Greene Memorial Hospital.

Beavercreek’s growing population was a draw for the five-story, $135 million hospital, located off of Pentagon Boulevard in a major development spot close to The Mall at Fairfield Commons, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and Wright State University.

Before Soin Medical opened, patients were going to Dayton-area hospitals further away or they were going to outpatient health centers that couldn’t do surgeries or trauma cases.

“If I have to take you to another facility to operate on you, it’s suboptimal,” Burns said. Building a new hospital “was meeting a need to get people the ability to have health care that would be here.”

Soin Medical does general, robotic-assisted, orthopedic and spine surgeries, in addition to emergency and maternity services. Patients come from the Beavercreek, Enon, Fairborn, Riverside and Xenia areas.

Since the emergency department first opened February last year, Soin opened a maternity unit last May and emergency services have been given Provisional Level III Trauma status. The hospital has 494 full- and part-time employees.

Burns said the hospital building’s design makes it different. The Beavercreek hospital has a Universal Care Unit with about 20 patient bays that can be used flexibly for pre- and post-operative care, imaging tests, observation or emergency department outflow at busy times.

The emergency department saw its most patient visits — 107 visits — one weekend recently in February, said Belinda Mallett, vice president of patient care and clinical services.

Kettering Health’s Greene County presence has grown since Greene Memorial Hospital became part of the network in 2009.

The placement of Soin Medical Center along the Interstate 675 corridor slicing Greene County placed the new hospital in a direct line of competition with Miami Valley Hospital South in Centerville, several exits down the highway. A year ago in March, Miami Valley South also expanded from a freestanding emergency department to offer inpatient surgery services with a 48-bed patient tower and maternity unit.

Kettering Health operates eight hospitals including Soin, and has more than 10,000 employees.