WellStar Kennestone Hospital is preparing to break ground on a $38 million project that will add a new seven-floor tower to the Marietta facility.
"The goal of this new tower is to convert WellStar Kennestone Hospital to a primarily private in-patient room campus," said Keith Bowermaster, spokesman for WellStar Health System.
The hospital currently has 633 beds and that will not change after the project replaces the hospital's remaining double-occupancy rooms with private rooms, a move that is designed to increase patient satisfaction.
While shared rooms and wards were once the norm in hospitals, private rooms are now preferred to cut down on infections and to provide privacy to patients when talking to doctors and family members.
The new tower will be a replica of the existing Blue Tower on the Kennestone campus. Site planning work began May 16. An official groundbreaking is expected in the next few weeks, Bowermaster said. The project is scheduled to be completed in the fall of 2012.
WellStar Kennestone is a public hospital that is owned by Cobb County's Kennestone Hospital Authority. WellStar Health System, a non-profit organization, leases Kennestone from the authority. WellStar operates four other public hospitals in Cobb, Douglas and Paulding counties. Kennestone is the largest hospital in the the WellStar system, which also includes five urgent care facilities, 15 imaging centers and 86 medical group offices, according to the system's 2010 annual report.
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