Wellstar Kennestone’s new emergency department set to open by end of July

COBB COUNTY, Ga. — While the COVID-19 pandemic continues, a major addition is coming to one of metro Atlanta’s biggest hospitals.

Wellstar Kennestone in Marietta will move into their brand new emergency department on July 23.

Channel 2′s Steve Gehlbach got an exclusive look inside at the new facility in Cobb County. The hospital actually pushed back the opening.

The new 166-bed facility is hard to miss as you drive in or out of Marietta. It sits right between Church and Cherokee streets with a two-story sky bridge.

The expansion was set to open in May, but the leaders didn’t want to make the transition in the middle of a spike of COVID-19 cases. So they held off, even though the space was finished and all equipment moved in.

Gehlbach spoke with the hospital’s president about the decision to open now.

“Once we recognized that Kennestone was actually taking care of a high number of COVID positive patients, it became part of our phasing,” President Mary Chapman said. “We delayed it and anticipated that if we needed to care for patients here we could. The good news is we never had to bring COVID patients over to this space.”

The expansion will more than double Kennestone’s ER space and capacity. It will also allow the hospital to better care for COVID patients and help contain infections once it opens.

The executive director of nursing and emergency services Nancy Doolittle says there will be no shared rooms, only those designed for family care.

“The rooms are private, so we have private rooms for each patient. We also focused on different entry points, so if someone were coming in with something infectious, we can segregate them off from the other entries,” Doolittle said.

Chapman said the hospital is here for the community and urged people not to hesitate putting it to use.

“We don’t want our community members to delay getting their care. We want them to see this as a place to trust that they can get safe care,” she said.

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