Union City emergency room: Grady opens new southside facility
Grady officially opens new South Fulton Emergency Department
In a historic milestone for healthcare access in metro Atlanta, Grady Health System officially opened its brand-new, 20,000-square-foot Grady South Freestanding Emergency Department. Designed to provide 24/7 emergency care to an area that local leaders have long decried as a "healthcare desert."
UNION CITY, Ga - A new freestanding Grady Health System emergency room opened Tuesday in Union City, bringing critical medical care back to a community left without local hospital options for years.
Southside medical care
What we know:
A $1 billion, three-phase project by Grady Health System is underway to address what local medical officials and residents call a "healthcare desert" on the southside.
The newly opened freestanding emergency department operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week to provide a higher level of medical care to the community. According to medical director Dr. Sulaiman Wazeerud-Din, the facility functions at a higher tier than standard urgent care centers, offering board-certified emergency room physicians, round-the-clock X-rays, and CAT scans 24-7.
The medical expansion comes after the 2022 closure of Atlanta Medical Center and the closure of a Wellstar Hospital facility in East Point. Local residents expressed comfort at having emergency care nearby, including 63-year-old Linda Barber, who was the very first patient treated at the facility Tuesday morning. Barber, who arrived at 7:30 a.m. after waiting overnight, said the staff immediately completed her triage and lowered her dangerously high blood pressure. Hospital officials stated that future phases of the Southside development will include a medical office building and a 200-bed hospital.
Union City opens new state of the art ER
A new freestanding emergency room opened in Union City to provide 247 care for patients in a healthcare desert, according to hospital officials.
Future facility expansion
Timeline:
Officials say construction will begin on the medical office building in early 2028. The new 200-bed hospital is schedule to open in early 2031. While patients are already using the walk-in services, emergency personnel have not yet transported the first patient to the facility by ambulance, but they do have ambulances standing by for service.
The Source: The information in this story was gathered from Grady Health System officials, including medical director Dr. Sulaiman Wazeerud-Din, who explained the medical capabilities of the new facility, as well as local patient Linda Barber, who described her firsthand experience as the center's first patient.