South Bend Memorial Hospital celebrates major milestone Friday

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- Memorial Hospital in South Bend celebrated a major milestone on Friday with the completion of the new patient tower.

A crane put the last beam in place on the tower Friday morning.

The tower will include two new ICU's allowing the hospital to have more trauma patients than ever before.

There will also be 100 new nurses and 200 new staff members, plus more space and bigger rooms for family members to come in and visit their loved ones.

Brian Spencer, Assistant VP of Facilities for Beacon Health System, stated, "So, the placing of a final beam in a construction project of the top of the structure, the highest point in the structure, is really a turning point in a job. It's where the job changes from, 'We're working on getting up," to 'We're working on filling in.' We're going to fill in all of the rooms. We're going to build all of the spaces where those things happen."

On Oct. 30, there will be a job fair for new nurses looking for opportunities with Memorial Hospital. That will take place from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the hospital library.

Sarah Paturalski, Director of Patient Services for Memorial Hospital, added, "This new building is a new acute care adult tower, so at the base of that tower sits a brand-new state of the art Intensive Care Unit. It'll feature mostly surgical oriented patients, because it sits right next to our operating room, and then stacked on top of that is an adult acute care tower. So adult focus patients."