09-05-2025
'Built for us, by us': UKKD unveils main entrance
ASHLAND Patients and visitors of UK King's Daughters will receive a refreshed welcoming come Monday morning after the hospital's main campus unveiled its new main entrance on Thursday.
The celebration of the hospital's redesigned entry point is just one piece of the campus' years-long expansion project to be completed, as the hospital is now gearing up to phase in a brand new emergency department.
Following a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Thursday to mark the opening of the main entrance, Northeast Kentucky Chamber of Commerce hosted a Business After Hours event which included tours of the soon-to-open emergency department.
The opening of the new ED is planned for June 18, where emergency healthcare will be phased into the new 200,000-square-foot emergency department wing.
The overall project, which began 2 1/2 years ago, totaled a $160 million of UK King's Daughters investment into the functional — but aging — campus.
Tour guide Jody Archer, UKKD's Business Development Manager, said the project was a long time coming.
'We've needed this since I've been here,' said Archer, who has been employed at the hospital for 20 years.
The new emergency department features 60-plus private rooms, new triage spaces, two trauma bays, three isolation rooms and an eight-bed behavioral health unit.
Throughout the tour, privacy and safety appear to be key components in the expansion's design while still offering quick access to vital services like radiological and lab testing.
With separate entrances for ambulances, inmates and behavioral health patients, the new emergency department aims to provide segregated spaces for vulnerable individuals — whereas in the older emergency department, those patients may be forced to wait for testing or an available bed in the waiting room.
Although Archer said UKKD's isn't a trauma center, two new trauma bays allow the sickest patients to receive immediate care, as some patients may need to be stabilized before being transported to nearby trauma centers.
Archer said the use of three isolation rooms is a game-changer in the event another COVID-19 arises, but will also come in handy as patient overflow spaces if the need arises.
The new emergency department also features a room designated specifically for decontamination and rooms that can accommodate patients weighing up to 1,200 pounds.
The eight rooms in the behavioral health unit are also designed for patient safety, with specialized features to keep staff, the general public and patients segregated from violent patients or safe from themselves in the event they wish to self harm.
Archer said the emergency department will have badge-only access points, metal detectors and an officer on site 24/7.
'I hope with the expansion we really continue the mission,' Katie Arnett, Vice President of Patient Experience, said. 'Regardless of your circumstance, we are here. Any day, Any hour.
'That's the 1,000-foot view but centered around why we're all here,' Arnett said, 'from housekeeping to administration.'
Arnett, an employee for 17 years and daughter of a 40-year nurse, said the expansion is personal for all staff, as they, too, are consumers and patients of the hospital.
'It's a big but special place to work,' Arnett said, which was kept in mind during the design process that included several voices of those 'on the ground' every day.
'It really was built for us, by us,' Arnett said.
As far as the new, centralized main entrance, previously Patient Tower B, UKKD CEO Sara Marks said she's eager to see patient reactions to the easier to access corridors commonly described as 'a maze.'
Marks said despite the limited space in the current emergency department and influx of patients during COVID-19 and the closure of Our Lady of Bellefonte Hospital in 2020, 'our team did a phenomenal job.'
'But now they get to have this space,' Marks said, describing the emergency department expansion as the highlight of the past 2 1/2 years.
