Dawn Johnson of Flight for Life talks about the two helicopter landing pads on the roof of the new Bradley-Thompson Tower at Christus Mother Frances Hospital - Tyler on Thursday, May 28, 2020.

This weekend, Christus Trinity Mother Frances’ new Bradley Thompson Tower will be open for business. The new facility boasts over 200,000 square feet, and will provide a central hub to the hospital by conveniently connecting to the other major existing wings for easy access.

Christus Trinity Mother Frances President Jason Proctor said the biggest focus of the new Bradley Thompson Tower is to increase the speed and efficiency of the hospital.

Hospital officials say the new facility and commodities will cause waiting room time to decrease by 30 minutes. Patients’s time to get to triage and seeing a clinician will both become 50% faster.

“Really, it’s about speed, it’s about getting people access to see doctors,” said Proctor. “You know, when you think you need to go to the emergency room, you want to go and see a doctor. We literally have the expectation that a patient gets to see a doctor within minutes of after they walk in.”

Inside the tower are separate adult and pediatric lobbies and waiting rooms, as well as 48 private emergency rooms. Forty of these rooms are designated for adults, while the other eight are pediatric rooms.

There are two designated trauma rooms each with two separate bays that are designed to become make-shift operating rooms if necessary. Each of the rooms are sporting the latest technology in patient monitoring with a completely mobile monitoring system in case the patient needs to be moved.

“Every facet of the emergency care center has been upgraded,” Ryan Tamula, administrative director for emergency services, said. “From the facilities to the staffing – our staffing model has now increased so we can absorb the volume (of patients) that we have here in Tyler.”

The new tower also has two intensive care units with a total of 48 individual patient rooms. The hospital said that these rooms not only provide privacy, but also help to prevent the spread of infection.

But perhaps most notably are the two new helipads on top of the new facilities.

Previously, the hospital’s two old helipads were on ground level, requiring patients to be loaded in an ambulance after landing in the helicopter. The ambulance would then drive the patient across the street to the emergency room.

By putting the two additional helipads on the roof, the Christus Flight for Life nurses are now able to unload the patient from the helicopter to the inside elevator and send them directly down to the emergency room on the ground floor for immediate care. The new ambulance bays allow the ambulances to pull directly into the side of the hospital and provide care to patients within minutes.

“It’s a complete game-changer from the top, down,” said Tamula. “We have a helipad now that will take patients down directly to the department that they’re needing.”

The new Bradley Thompson Tower will be functioning in full-swing come 4:30 a.m. on Saturday.