In early September, Piedmont Fayette Hospital will be ready for another first.

That’s when three labor and delivery beds will go online, along with two separate rooms to handle Caesarean section births, said hospital spokeswoman Ryan Duffy. There will also be a nursery and a neonatal intensive care unit, both of which will be connected, Duffy said.

The new OB wing is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the physical growth the hospital is undergoing. The OB unit will be located on the third floor of a four-floor addition to the hospital, part of which has been opened already for the new dining room.

The old dining room is being renovated so the surgery, radiology/imaging and critical care units can be shifted over, which will make room for the expansion of the emergency room.

The ER will almost triple in size and the critical care unit is growing from six beds to eight. A new entrance on the hospital’s west side will be used for outpatient surgery.

The hospital’s laboratory is also tripling in size, as it will need to handle higher volumes from the surgery and ER units in addition to the OB and critical care units, Duffy said.

“The laboratory will need to step up to that need,” Duffy said.

Also, the patient registration area is being reworked to afford more privacy for patients, Duffy added.

None of the above includes the new physicians’ building that will be connected to the main hospital. Cardiologists will be on the second floor and obstetricians will be on the third floor, allowing them to use walkways to travel back and forth between the hospital and the clinical building, Duffy said.

There will also be approximately 2,000 additional parking spaces as part of the expansion. That might seem like a lot, but consider this: the hospital’s staff started out at 200 and has grown to well over 1,000, Duffy said.

The new dining room, which is already operational, offers a wide selection of food for patients in a manner strikingly similar to room service. Even if a patient is on a restricted diet set by their doctor, they still have much to choose from when they place a call to order each meal, Duffy said.

It’s a little more expensive than traditional meal service, but it does cut down on waste drastically and it helps patients because they will eat more when they get what they want to eat, Duffy said.

The new service also helps patients feel more comfortable because they will have some level of control over their hospital stay, Duffy added.

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