Patients arriving for emergency medical care at Tanner Medical Center/Carrollton will soon have a new destination.
The new emergency department at Tanner Medical Center/Carrollton will open Thursday, Feb. 7 at 7 a.m.
Drop-off and walk-in patients and visitors are asked to use the new emergency department entrance along Ambulance Drive, near the corner of Clinic Avenue. Reserved parking for emergency department patients and visitors will be available on the first level of the Clinic Avenue parking deck adjacent to the new emergency department.
For safety reasons, the new ambulance ramp is reserved for ambulance traffic only. Directional signage posted around the Tanner Medical Center/Carrollton campus is available to help show visitors the way to Tanner’s new emergency department.
According to Larry Steed, executive vice president and chief administrative operations officer for Tanner Health System, patients being treated in the existing emergency department will continue to receive care there while patients arriving after 7 a.m. will receive care in the new emergency department.
“For a brief time, we’ll be operating two emergency departments in Carrollton,” said Steed. “We expect to be able to close out the existing emergency department very quickly, but we don’t expect to be moving patients from the existing unit to the new one unless a prolonged treatment plan is necessary.”
Tanner is encouraging people to familiarize themselves with the location of the new emergency department so that they will be able to quickly and safely navigate the hospital campus when they arrive.
“Local residents have been going to the same location for emergency care for more than 20 years, so we expect that there will be a period of adjustment,” said Steed, who also said that Tanner Security officers will continue to be posted outside the existing emergency department to help after the new emergency department opens.
Almost 2,000 residents toured the new emergency department at Tanner Medical Center/Carrollton during a public open house on Saturday, Jan. 26. Since then, Tanner staff has worked to thoroughly clean the new unit and install clinical equipment to prepare the space for patient care. The new emergency department was scheduled to open last year, but a ruptured fire suppression line spilled more than 12,000 gallons of water into the new hospital expansion before it could open to the public. The space has since undergone extensive renovations and is now prepared to serve patients.
“Our region’s population has almost doubled since the last major emergency department expansion at Tanner Medical Center/Carrollton,” said Loy Howard, president and CEO of Tanner Health System. “Our new emergency department offers twice the number of beds, three times the space and on-unit diagnostic imaging as compared to the existing unit. This new expansion will serve our community’s emergency medicine needs for generations.”
The new emergency department offers 40 beds, including a number of specialized trauma rooms, and each exam room has been designed to provide care for a wide range of medical emergencies in a single space.
“If you come in for severe heartburn and we find that you’re actually having a heart attack, or an aching leg turns out to be a deep vein thrombosis, then we’re prepared to provide care for that situation right away without having to move you to another space in the emergency department,” said Tom Fitzgerald, MD, a board-certified emergency physician with Carrollton Emergency Physicians and medical operations leader for the emergency department at Tanner Medical Center/Carrollton.
On-unit diagnostic imaging services, a first in the region, will help the patient care team in the emergency department get the information they need to make diagnoses faster, leading to faster treatment. Patients will be able to receive a digital X-ray, CT scan or ultrasound scan in the emergency department without having to be moved to the hospital’s diagnostic imaging unit.
The recently completed construction at Tanner Medical Center/Carrollton also expanded the hospital’s surgical services unit, adding new state-of-the-art operating suites and more. An advanced new hybrid operating suite is now available, and Tanner has announced that it will begin offering minimally invasive robotic surgery in the coming months.
Patients arriving for surgery are asked to use the new outpatient surgery entrance, through the new atrium on Clinic Avenue. Complimentary valet service is provided at this location.
More information on Tanner’s facilities—including the 24-hour emergency departments also available at Tanner Medical Center/Villa Rica and Higgins General Hospital in Bremen—along with maps of each Tanner hospital is available online at www.tanner.org.