Benefactors, community supporters, affiliated physicians and hospital staff will celebrate the grand opening of South Georgia Medical Center’s new Dasher Memorial Heart Center and Patient Tower at 2pm on Sunday, August 25.
Members of the Valdosta-Lowndes Chamber of Commerce and area dignitaries will be on hand for the 2 pm ribbon cutting and dedication ceremony. The new 5-story patient tower, which is located on the south side of the main campus, is accessible from Slater and Cowart Streets. Patients will be able to park across from the new tower and walk into a centralized lobby and registration area. The Outpatient Center occupies the space to the right and the Dasher Memorial Heart Center occupies the area to the left of the registration area. Inpatient specialty beds for cardiology, medical-surgical intensive care and orthopedic-spine are also accessible from the tower lobby.
The 130,000 square foot building, which is part of an overall $150 million campus transformation, includes an expansive new main entrance, private and secure patient registration desks, consolidated cardiology services including 3 cath labs plus 96 private rooms with many innovations designed to improve the patient experience and safety.
“More than 25 years have passed since we added any new patient rooms,” explained Bill Forbes, SGMC Chief Planning Officer. “To make sure we were building for our current needs as well as future needs, a multi-disciplinary team collaborated with the architects to design and equip this facility.”
Construction on the $64 million Tower began in November 2011. Overall, the Tower is designed to accommodate 96 private patient rooms – 24 rooms on four floors – all equipped with the highest level of monitoring capabilities and designed with the flexibility to meet medical, surgical, intermediate and intensive care requirements. The first patients will be admitted to the tower after Labor Day.
CEO Randy Sauls said, “The new tower is another milestone in our continuing efforts to provide safe, accessible, quality healthcare to patients from throughout our region.”
The new construction reflects popular colors and lots of natural light. Artwork, furnishings and other decor reflect elements of nature, along with a harmonious blend of materials like stone, glass and laminate flooring to help create a relaxing atmosphere for health and healing. The new patient care units feature a nursing sub-station for every two rooms, allowing clinicians to enter orders and access critical information closer to bedside. For nurses, the room has fingertip access to advanced technology to perform their jobs and bedside computer stations for documentation. The entire patient room was created to build a better experience for patients and their families and to make the caregiving process easier.
