Walk-in emergency care at UMC now uses a new entrance off of Warren Avenue. There is a separate entrance, waiting room and treatment area for pediatric patients.

The new Emergency Department (ED) has 61 beds, up from 46, and its own laboratory, radiology section and CT scanner. It adjoins the new Trauma Center and a 16-bed outpatient observation unit for emergency patients that opened in 2007.

"This is the third ED for University Medical Center," said longtime UMC emergency physician Harvey Meislin, MD, head of The University of Arizona Department of Emergency Medicine. "The first ED was about 7,000 square feet, the second about 20,000, and this new ED is 43,000 square feet in size. CT scanners in the ED, multiple ultrasound machines, fiber optic video airway equipment, digital imaging and critical-care monitoring in every room were not even a dream with the first or second ED. They are a reality today. The new adult Emergency Department, pediatric emergency area and Trauma Center rival any facility in the United States," Dr. Meislin said.

The new Trauma Center boasts seven resuscitation suites — up from four — and a new rooftop helipad to accept injured patients from as far away as Yuma, New Mexico and northern Mexico, said Peter Rhee, MD, medical director of UMC's trauma program and professor of surgery at the UA Department of Surgery.

UMC's trauma program ranks among the top university trauma centers nationwide in survival rates, in lowest cost and in shortest hospital stays. Last year a blue-ribbon committee assembled by Tucson Mayor Bob Walkup to assess the city's needs for trauma services concluded that UMC's enhanced Trauma Center and expanded trauma team should be able to accommodate Tucson's projected growth through at least 2020.

UMC's new Emergency Department and Trauma Center are part of an $184 million expansion, financed by bonds, that began in 2006. They occupy the entire ground floor of a six-story tower still under construction.