Years in the making and boasting some of the largest donations in the health care provider’s history, Asante’s new $445 million Rogue Regional Medical Center patient pavilion is now open.

After a mad dash of crews making final touches over the weekend, Monday marked the opening day for the hospital’s 323,600-square-foot expansion, according to Asante and Asante Foundation spokeswoman Desirae MacGillivray Myers. She said that patients would be moved into the six-story facility connected to the hospital’s existing patient tower starting Monday and throughout the week.

From 20 new state-of-the-art operating suites to the new Olsrud Family Women’s and Children’s Hospital, the six-story patient pavilion brings a host of new, improved and expanded facilities and amenities for everyone from expecting families to heart patients. It also moves the main entrance to the west side of the hospital off Medical Center Drive.

The new women’s and children’s hospital offers numerous new amenities for expecting mothers, newborns and children. It is located on the top two floors of the newly opened expansion.

It includes a new 20-room Family Newborn Unit for families and babies to recover after routine childbirths, a new larger obstetrics emergency department for women experiencing pregnancy problems and the new Binette Family Birth Center, which among other birthing amenities features new C-section rooms that are 40% larger. The pediatrics unit includes 16 private rooms for children and youths, and a new outpatient pediatric infusion clinic designed to accommodate children with cancer and other serious illnesses.

The operating suites are each designed for different specialties — cardiovascular, neurological, orthopedic, urology or trauma surgeries. Three of the operating rooms are equipped with robotic surgery systems, according to MacGillivray Myers, and all patients will be prepped for surgery and recover in a new pre-anesthesia and post-anesthesia care unit.

RRMC’s new intensive and intermediate care units are designed to be more versatile and to better specialize care for patients experiencing heart-related issues, according to Asante.

The new cardiovascular intensive care unit has 24 beds, an increase in bed capacity by a third and nearly double the floor space of the old specialized critical care floor specifically geared for patients with acute heart conditions, according to Asante. Further, the space has additional “shell space” to expand its capacity.

The rooms in the new 16-bed intermediate care unit and 24-bed general ICU are all designed to be isolation rooms capable of mitigating the spread of airborne illnesses by being able to switch from negative or positive airflow as needed. MacGillivray Myers described the design as a lesson learned from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The expansion carried a price tag of $455 million, which was covered in part through bonds, capital funds and record-setting philanthropic donations. Those donations included $12 million for children’s health care from the Olsrud family, which Asante states is the largest donation in its history, and $3 million from Rogue Credit Union, which Asante described in September as its largest-ever corporate gift.

Another 8,000 donors also contributed through the Asante Foundation’s AsanteForward campaign. For more information on supporting programs and services at the hospital through AsanteForward, see asantefoundation.org/campaign.