 It's been over a decade since the Ascension Health Baxter Clinic opened, but it's never too early to start thinking ahead. Clayton Castle was at the groundbreaking today for the expansion of the Ascension Health Baxter Clinic. Ascension Health is expanding again. This time it's adding on to the current Baxter Clinic building. For Ascension, this is kind of a big deal. For Ascension Health, this is a big deal. This really means that we're going to have quite a bit more square footage to hire more primary care, more specialists to better serve the community. The expansion will add 20,000 square feet to the 48,000 square foot building and add an additional 32 exam rooms to the Baxter Clinic, which offers a variety of medical services. Primarily, primary care. We have urgent care services as well. We have women's health, so we have obstetricians, we have our advanced care practitioners, which tend to be nurse practitioners and physician assistants as well. We have full lab services. We have full radiology. We have physical therapy as well, and so we just want to continue to grow those services to better meet the community's needs. We know that at times it can be hard to find a primary care doctor, and we just think it's important that everyone has great access to care. The Baxter Clinic is one of many other clinics for Ascension Health, which has seen an expansive growth to other outlying communities. We're also committed, as you probably know, to the outlying areas, so we have an expansion going on right now in Pierce. We opened up the Emily Clinic a couple of years ago. We're planning on more growth in some of the other clinics as well, so we don't want to neglect any of the communities that we're in, and this was really Baxter's turn for us to continue with that investment. As for Baxter itself, Ascension Health has been an economic catalyst for the city and surrounding community. Once Ascension has landed on this property, the development around it really kicked in. They were kind of the catalyst for what happened here, and a lot of other things have happened since then. Now the expected completion date of the Baxter expansion is tentatively set for Spring 2018. Reporting in Baxter Clayton Castle, Lakeland News. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.