After the Iowa Clinic opened its West Lakes Campus in West Des Moines four years ago, the facility went from handling about 90,000 patients in its first year to approximately 150,000 by its third year. With little fanfare, the state’s largest physician-owned multi-specialty medical practice last week announced a major expansion of that facility that will enable it to handle twice that many patients in the future.

Construction will begin this spring on an 85,000-square-foot addition to the clinic at 5950 University Ave., doubling its space. The project is expected to be completed by next summer.

“We didn’t have any definitive plan as to when any expansion out there might occur,” said C. Edward Brown, the Iowa Clinic’s chief executive officer. “I do think it is a little bit sooner than what we had anticipated. But on the other hand, with the success we’ve had out there, we weren’t in the building a couple of years before we realized it was something that would occur sooner than we originally thought.”

The $20 million project will allow the Iowa Clinic to introduce some new services to its West Des Moines offices, such as a sleep laboratory and pulmonology and urology clinics. Additionally, it will enable the clinic to expand some existing specialty offices, including cardiology, internal medicine and medical imaging. The facility currently offers services in 19 specialties, from an allergy clinic to a women’s center.

Though it will probably take several years to reach 300,000 patients per year, it’s likely the West Des Moines clinic will reach that number, said Brown, adding that the practice owns more land adjacent to the clinic if further expansion is needed in the future.

“I’m excited that the public has the confidence in us to try to meet a public need,” Brown said. “We’re trying to provide the most modern and efficient facilities, and that will help with recruiting talent to Iowa. We’re already blessed to have some of the best clinical care in the country in Iowa. One of the ways to do that is to have the facilities to complement that.”

The project does not require the review or approval of the Iowa Health Facilities Council because it is essentially construction of medical office space, not hospital space, Brown said.

“There’s a dramatic difference in building a hospital versus building a medical office,” he said. “Quite simply, we don’t offer hospital beds in this facility, so we don’t have people staying for extended periods of time. While we have testing and outpatient services, we will not have overnight acute-care services.”

Besides the West Lakes facility, the Iowa Clinic operates outreach clinics at rural hospitals in 23 communities throughout the state, as well as a clinic in Ottumwa and 12 Des Moines locations, including offices near Mercy Medical Center, Iowa Lutheran Hospital and Iowa Methodist Medical Center.

A number of Iowa Clinic physicians and staff will move to the expanded West Lakes clinic from those Des Moines offices, many of which will be consolidated to one downtown location, Brown said. In all, the facility will house a total of 375 physicians and staff, about 50 percent more than it does currently.

From a fiscal standpoint, the physician group is comfortable with the investment it’s making in West Des Moines, Brown said. .

“We feel very comfortable with it; we’re a very fiscally conservative organization,” he said. “We’ve looked into our ability to handle this project financially, and we all feel very comfortable about it.”