Phoebe set to open $150 million Trauma and Critical Care Tower

ALBANY — Officials with Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital showed off the hospital’s new $150 million Trauma and Critical Care Tower Thursday in advance of the facility’s Jan. 15 opening.

“The opening of this incredible new tower is the culmination of our Phoebe Focus initiative that we announced in 2019, a plan that shaped our health system’s strategic investments in patient safety and patient care enhancements over the past five years,” Phoebe Health System President/CEO Scott Steiner said before taking part in a ribbon-cutting ceremony in the new facility. “This tower is the finest and most advanced medical facility in south Georgia, and it will ensure our ability to meet the dynamic health care needs of the people in our region for many years to come.”

The new tower, which at more than 53,000 square feet will almost triple the size of Phoebe’s current Emergency Center, will include expanded, state-of-the-art emergency and trauma centers, an expanded neonatal intensive care unit, and a surgical intensive care unit. And where there are three bays for emergency vehicle deliveries in Phoebe’s current ER, the new facility includes eight spacious bays.

“Years of planning provided our care teams with numerous opportunities to have direct input into the design of these units to help us create the most efficient work flow and guarantee patient- and family-centered facilities that provide the safest and best healing environment,” Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital President Deb Angerami said.

The tower’s main entrance will be on Fourth Avenue from Jefferson Street. Patients and visitors will park in a newly surfaced parking lot in front of the building. The first floor of the four-floor facility will house the emergency and trauma centers. Phoebe earned designation as a Level 2 Trauma Center and re-designation as a Level 1 Emergency Cardiac Care Center last year.

Phoebe Spokesman Ben Roberts said that as soon as the new tower opens on Wednesday, work will start immediately on Phase 2 of the project, which includes a complete overhaul of the hospital’s current emergency center.

“In Phase 2, we’ll tear apart the old ER and — when construction is complete — connect the two,” Roberts, who led media representatives on a pre-ribbon-cutting tour of the facility, said. “The process will be a seamless one; the newly remodeled center will flow into this new one.”

The second floor of the tower includes the vastly enlarged NICU center. Where Phoebe is licensed for 27 beds to care for preemies in its current neonatal unit, the new center increases that number to 48.

“We’re licensed for 27 babies now, but at times the NICU nurses are caring for 40,” Roberts said. “And while we’re licensed for 48 babies in the new unit, we could surge up to 70. For just such an emergency, the design if the new NICU would allow us — in an extreme emergency — to provide care for as many as four babies in some rooms.”  

The third floor of the tower will house a 20-bed Surgical Intensive Care unit, expanding the hospital’s ability to care for its most critically ill patients.

“We work closely with our trauma team, and many of our trauma patients end up in our SICU, so it makes sense to have the Surgical Intensive Care Unit in the same tower as our Trauma Center,” Phoebe Director of Critical Care Dr. Jyotir Mehta said. “Our other ICUs are nearby, and we will continue to employ a high-intensity model of care … to provide the highest quality and most advanced care to our critically ill patients.”

Roberts said NICU and SICU patients would be transferred to the new units starting at 6 a.m. on Jan. 15.

“Any patient arriving for emergency care after 6 a.m. Wednesday will be directed to the new ER entrance,” he said. “The current ER will remain open until all patients there have been admitted to the hospital or discharged.”