Phoebe begins Wetherbee Lobby renovations

ALBANY – Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital began Phase II of its Wetherbee Lobby renovations on Tuesday. During this phase of renovations, the main entrance will be closed and patients and visitors will be redirected to a temporary entrance to the east of the main entrance.

“We are very excited to be beginning this next phase of our lobby renovations,” Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital Chief Executive Officer Joe Austin said. “Phoebe is committed to providing quality service and experience for all our patients and visitors every time they enter our facility, and that begins at our front doors. We appreciate the community’s patience as we work to enhance our patients’ and visitors’ experience upon entering the hospital.”

The renovation project includes replacing the floor, relocating visitor registration closer to the main entrance doors and installation of easy-to-use registration kiosks. The kiosks will allow Phoebe to track the number of visitors entering the facility, which is one of the CDC guidelines for COVID-19 contact tracing.

“We’ll add an electronic kiosk that will allow us, using visitors’ driver’s licenses, to make a photo guest pass that will include the room that each person is visiting. … It tells us who’s in the house,” Austin said. “Given the impact of COVID, that’s one of the things the CDC said we need to monitor.”

Austin said the facelift in the lobby will take about six weeks.

“That lobby’s about 25 years old, so this is something that’s been needed for quite some time,” he said. “It’s been in our long-term plans, but we moved it up the agenda because of the need.”

Patients who have appointments at the Phoebe Cancer Center or any offices in the Medical Towers should still use the Medical Tower entrance at the south end of the hospital’s main campus. The renovations affect the main hospital lobby entrance only. For more information and a map, visit phoebehealth.com then click on the Our Locations tab.

Also on Tuesday, the Phoebe Health System announced that its COVID numbers remained in the low-20s for what now has been a two- to three-week period. A Phoebe news release showed that 21 COVID patients are being treated at Phoebe facilities in Albany, while three are being treated at Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus.