WELLSBORO - Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hospital will hold a public open house from 1:30 to 5 p.m. Jan. 8 to celebrate the completion of its new emergency department. The event includes guided tours of the facility, refreshments and live music.
During the open house, attendees will tour the new patient rooms, triage area, mission control station, decontamination and isolation rooms, registration area, pediatric and adult lobbies, quiet room and trauma rooms.
Staff will be on hand to demonstrate state-of-the-art technology and specialty equipment as well as to answer any questions the public might have about the new addition.
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The new emergency department at Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hospital in Wellsboro now is completed and will be featured during a public open house on Jan. 8.
The hospital expansion project was announced in Fall 2009 as a necessary step for meeting the increasing volumes of emergency department admissions.
After months of careful planning and designing, local business leaders, government officials, Laurel Health System employees and community members gathered to break ground on the hospital expansion project on May 4, 2010.
Site work began in mid-May and continued over the next 18 months.
The first floor houses the new emergency department, including:
14 patient beds;
Two triage beds;
An expanded waiting room and vending area;
Separate emergency department entrances for walk-in patients and patients brought via ambulance; and
The second floor will house a new same-day surgery unit.
As construction on the new emergency department neared completion, a cornerstone ceremony was held on Sept. 27, 70 years to the day from the setting of the original hospital cornerstone in 1941.
During the event, Laurel Health System's "Facebook Baby Photo Contest" winners Josh and Kali Jessup were awarded a $70 Visa gift card in acknowledgment of the 70 years from cornerstone to cornerstone. The Jessups' photo of their baby boy, Braylen James Jessup, randomly was selected out of more than 120 photos submitted.
Children were featured from every decade since the opening of the hospital in the 1940s.
"The community has been a vital part of this project from day one," added Jan Fisher, president and CEO of Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hospital. "This expansion was conceived with the community's growing medical needs in mind, and our community has watched with us as construction reached each exciting milestone.
"We want the public to see firsthand how their support has helped us grow as we celebrate the expansion's completion," Fisher said.
For more information on Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hospital, call 1-800-808-5287 or visit www.laurelhs.org.
Upcoming events:
The first Expectants Parents class of 2012 will be held on Jan. 10.
Titled "Physical and Emotional Changes During Pregnancy," the free class will be held from 7 to 8:30 p.m. in the board room of the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hospital.
The class is part of a cycle of classes addressing common questions and concerns of expectant parents, including labor and delivery, C-sections, breastfeeding and bottlefeeding, swaddling, physical and emotional changes and newborn needs.
Registration is not necessary; walk-ins welcomed.
For more information, call 723-0375.
