Rupert, Idaho (KMVT-TV) - This Wednesday the Minidoka Memorial Hospital held a special ribbon cutting ceremony in honor of their brand new emergency room.

This initial grand opening is only phase one of a complete overhaul of the hospital.

This Wednesday representatives from the city of Rupert, Minidoka Memorial Hospital and residents of the mini–cassia area all gathered to take tours and eat some grub to help celebrate the grand opening.

This brand new 7 million dollar facility features new operating rooms, a reception area and state of the art treatment rooms.

Carl Hanson, Administrator for Minidoka Memorial Hospital.

“The reason for us doing this is to provide more dignity and privacy for the patients using the hospital, also to upgrade our facilities. We know that if you don’t upgrade your facilities you fall further behind and we needed to upgrade our emergency department and we got it done.”

Up next for the hospital is the remodeling of the north side entrance along with the remodeling of the nurses stations and the radiology department.

That project is being called phase 2 and should be completed by the end of this year.