ATLANTA — Grady Memorial Hospital has grown its intensive care capacity by 40% to help meet the increased demand created by Wellstar Health System's closure of its Atlanta Medical Center hospitals in East Point and the Old Fourth Ward last year.
Trauma volume at Grady has increased since the closures, said Shannon Sale, Grady’s chief strategy officer to the Atlanta Business Chronicle. That echoes health system leaders' reports that wait times at hospitals across Atlanta increased.
After the Wellstar hospital in Old Fourth Ward closed last November, Grady was left as the sole Level I trauma center in the city.
Gov. Brian Kemp announced the state would provide Grady with $130 million in federal Covid-19 relief funds to help the safety-net hospital cope with the increased need for its services.
Grady used some of the funds for a 52-bed intensive care unit expansion completed this month, according to a press release from The Beck Group, which provided the design and construction services for the project. Health care architecture firm PF&A and engineering firm WSP also worked on the 30,000-square-foot expansion, according to a Beck press release.
Grady had 126 intensive care beds prior to the expansion, Sale said.
The additional beds require about 130 nurses to staff, Sale said. That need has been met using Grady's existing workforce as well as new hires.
Grady started using half of the 52 new beds in mid-November and the rest went live last week, Sale said.
For more on decreased wait times and how Grady is preparing for future demands, read the Atlanta Business Chronicle's full report.