The new emergency room at Lehigh Valley Health Network-Cedar Crest began accepting patients Tuesday morning, following its official opening and ribbon cutting on Monday.

The new ER has more than 200 care spaces that include more than 120 adult patient beds.

Dr. David Burmeister, chair of Emergency and Hospital Medicine at LVHN, said planning for the project began three years ago and construction took 20 months.

He said the goal from the beginning was to make the unit centered on the patient’s experience.

“We wanted to make sure that we put our feet in the shoes of the patients,” he said during a tour of the new unit.

In order to do this, the health network surveyed its departments to find out what they thought would make the experience better for the patients.

The result is an ER with color-coded pods and a unit divided into the specific emergency care needs: critical care for strokes and heart attacks, decontamination, behavioral health, trauma center, physical therapy, routine emergency care and an observation unit.

The 35-bed observation unit is for patients who do not need to be admitted for an overnight stay, but still need to be observed for a little while longer before going home. The space also provides flexibility in use.

“We can use this space for surges in volume,” Burmeister said.

All of the patient rooms are individual and private, except for in the trauma unit. The Level 1 Trauma Center has three beds and immediate access to a dedicated operating room through the doors adjacent to it.

Also adjacent to the trauma unit are two elevators connected to the helicopter pad large enough for two helicopters above the new ambulance entrance.

Even access to the hospital has improved for the ambulances. They will now enter the campus from Fish Hatchery Road, instead of the patient entrance off Cedar Crest Boulevard.

The ER includes its own CT scan, MRI and X-ray room, and a highly functioning laboratory.

The patient rooms include iPads to access information about their care. And some have their own bathrooms. Others have bathrooms close by to make it more convenient for the patient and family members.

Although construction on the new ER began before COVID-19 hit, the unit includes multiple negative pressure airflow rooms and an enhanced air circulation system, which circulates the air out of the building more often.

Even the waiting room has new features. It is spacious so people can easily socially distance themselves and flooded with natural lighting through large windows. A food court is next to it in case someone needs something.

In the event that patients have to wait in the waiting room to be seen, a television monitor will display a code for each patient waiting with an approximate time when they will be able to go back to their rooms.

“It’s really so much more than an ER,” Burmeister said. “Every detail has been thought of.”

Dr. Brian A. Nester, president and chief executive officer of LVHN, said the new ER adds 130,000 square feet to the original ER, which was 30,000 square feet. It had 47 adult beds and 12 pediatric beds. This was a problem, because LVHN sees about 90,000 adult and pediatric patients at the Cedar Crest ER each year.

The new ER is so large that the surface of the roof spans 3 acres, he said.

The original ER will be renovated to become a dedicated children’s ER with 27 beds. And the adult and children’s ERs have separate entrances and waiting rooms with plenty of parking outside and a valet service.

The cost of the entire project is $111 million.