TIFTON — After several years of planning and construction, the new patient tower at Tift Regional Medical Center has opened and hospital staff are more than ready to start putting it to work.

The new building should address many of the issues felt by patients, visitors and staff concerning the original hospital wing, such as excessive wait times and a lack of private rooms, while also allowing the hospital to more effectively care for its patients, hospital representatives said.

“It’s a very exciting time for our community; they’ve been talking about this for at least five to six years now, and a couple of years designing, planning and funding for it,” said Alex Le, chief operating officer at Tift Regional. “We officially broke ground on June of 2019, and we’re moving in Dec. 1, 2021. So the actual construction was a little over a two-year project but we’re ready for the move-in and ready for our community to come see what we’ve been working on these last couple of years.”

The tower stands at five stories tall, each floor dedicated to a specific field.

The first floor will be for ER patients; the second mechanical support; the third will serve as a connector to the old wing of the hospital; the fourth is reserved for ICU and Step Down patients; and the fifth will be used for orthopedics.

The new ER area of the wing adds three additional triage rooms, which at this time are planned to be used for COVID-19, and 36 critical care rooms.

Nurse stations are spread regularly throughout the hospital floors, allowing all nurses easy access to all patients if necessary.

Separate and larger service elevators have been installed to ensure hospital staff can adequately transport patients to other floors without needing to use the normal visitor elevators.

The patient tower has its own gift shop and cafeteria, which will include a coffee bar from local business Espresso 41, planned to be installed in February 2022.

Accompanying the new additions, Tift Regional plans on remodeling the old to fit the new, hospital representatives said.

Patients in the original wing will be moved into the new patient tower, where they will be relocated to private rooms. All semi-private rooms in the hospital will become private as well, to ensure patients receive proper comfort and security.

As the hospital moves out of the old spaces and into the new areas, the older sections will be renovated to match the specs and aesthetics of the new rooms and wing.

The patient tower has also been built with advancements in mind.

While it sits at five stories, its structure has been purposely designed to support several more floors in the event the hospital needs to grow in the future.