ST. GEORGE — Clogged arteries and premature babies are no longer an excuse to leave Washington County.

The Dixie Regional Medical Center, the only acute-care facility in the county, now offers open-heart surgeries and a newborn intensive care unit.

With an aging population, the $100 million medical facility is a key selling point for newcomers to the region.

Tony Collard, a real estate agent with Keller Williams Realty in St. George, said his clients routinely ask about the hospital.

"Definitely the key concern is the level of health care and the proximity of their home to that health care," Collard said. "They want to know if they get ill, if they have a cardiovascular surgeon. They want to know exactly what type of level of health care is going to be provided and if they have to travel out of the area for specialized medical care."

The new Intermountain Healthcare medical center was the largest building project in the county's history and hosted its first open-heart surgery in December 2003.

At the facility's 400 East campus, care is offered for infants born up to 12 weeks premature, with a target goal of caring for babies 17 weeks premature, according to Terri Draper, a spokeswoman for IHC's southern Utah region. Before the new facility opened, Draper said, open heart surgery candidates and premature infants were flown to hospitals on the Wasatch Front or in Las Vegas or Phoenix.

Today, the center performs roughly 350 heart surgeries a year and anticipates heart surgeries to increase 5 percent to 7 percent annually, according to Steven Vance, director of strategic planning for IHC's southern Utah region.

The center's two campuses offer 245 beds. As of December, the hospital had an occupancy rate of 62 percent. At a 78 percent occupancy rate, Vance said, the hospital would be considered at capacity and would need to expand. That probably won't happen for another five years.

"Oftentimes people think of St. George as mainly a retirement community," Vance said, "but we're seeing population growth throughout the whole age spectrum."

While physicians are easy to recruit to the area and have little problem affording homes, mid-level hospital positions, like those for nurses, radiology technologists, respiratory therapists and laboratory technicians, are becoming harder to fill.

"These are people who make in the range of $40,000 to $50,000 a year," Draper said. "They're trained professionals. They make a better-than-average income, but they still don't make enough to be able to get into a home easily in St. George. We've had difficulty in recruiting because of housing."

At least half of the center's 2,200 positions fall in the $40,000 to $50,000 pay range, Draper said. And while there continues to be a need to recruit more nurses, she said, partnerships with three local colleges mean most of the center's nursing positions are filled.

Draper said when the facility first opened the hospital had to hire 60 out-of-state "traveling" nurses, mainly due to a flu outbreak. That number has dropped to just six.

"We feel very fortunate to have the caliber of medical staff we do have," she said.

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