Patient safety and privacy concerns prompted a decision for major capital spending at Prince County Hospital, says P.E.I. Health Minister Rob Henderson.

Henderson discussed details of the project in the P.E.I. Legislature Thursday during the debate on the capital budget.

"The concept of this is really to actually not to add more services, other than the Women's Wellness Centre services, to ambulatory care, but it's to really to provide more issues around patient safety, privacy of patients and also to deal with infection control at that location," said Henderson told the legislature.

"We have seen that the rapid growth of many of those services, it has just outgrown the space. So we just need to provide better patient confidentiality and patient safety at that location."

Ambulatory care visits increased 42 per cent from 2011 to 2015.

Henderson said that work will start in the spring of 2017 and will be completed by January 2019.

There should be minimal disruption to the nursing care centre, oncology and the surgical clinic during that construction, he said.