New UAB Women & Infants Center Open House Set for Jan. 23

While the new University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Women & Infants Center will not open until Feb. 21, 2010, the public will get to sneak a peek inside the new state-of-the-art inpatient and outpatient facility in January.

December 29, 2009

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - While the new University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Women & Infants Center will not open until Feb. 21, 2010, the public will get to sneak a peek inside the new state-of-the-art inpatient and outpatient facility in January.

UAB Health System CEO William Ferniany, Ph.D., and UAB Hospital CEO Michael Waldrum, M.D., are hosting a public open house Saturday, Jan. 23, 2010, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the center, 1700 6th Ave. South. Attendees will be able to tour the new building, including the labor, delivery and recovery suites, the nation's largest, all private-room special care nursery, the Regional Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (RNICU) and Continuing Care Nursery (CCN), and patient rooms for maternity or gynecologic patients.

Light refreshments will be served. Complimentary parking is available in the parking deck located at the corner of 4th Ave. S. and 18th St. S. Attendees should bring their parking ticket to the open house for validation. For more information, call 205-996-7619 or email wisvc@uabmc.edu.

With the opening of the new UAB Women & Infants Center, UAB will build on its excellence in women's care. Patients will have access to a state-of-the-art facility equipped with the most advanced medical technologies available.

In addition to the highest level of care for both routine and complex pregnancies, well and sick newborn and gynecologic cancer and problems, the 430,000-square-foot Women & Infants Center will focus on providing patients and families with a homelike setting and amenities that might be found in a top-level hotel - valet parking, DVD players, flat-screen TVs, family lounges and play rooms, sleep space in all rooms for a spouse, parent  or support person, mini-refrigerators, patient family computer centers and laundries, and room service meals. The maternity care facilities are designed to keep parents of even the sickest infants together throughout the newborn's stay.

About UAB

The UAB Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology provides comprehensive care for every stage of life - from routine gynecologic care, to childbirth, to menopause and beyond. Its physicians are leaders in their fields in a nationally ranked program dedicated to giving patients the best care available.

The UAB Division of Pediatric Neonatal and Perinatal Medicine provides comprehensive care, with neonatologists on site 24 hours a day 365 day per year, to care for pre-term babies and newborns with illnesses, including respiratory distress syndrome, neonatal infections, persistent pulmonary hypertension and other illnesses. This division, together with Children's Hospital of Alabama, operates the region's only Level IIIC Regional Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, which, in addition to babies in need of this care who are born at UAB, also accepts referrals of infants from across the state, the nation and internationally. For more information about the UAB Women & Infants Center, go to www.uabmedicine.org/locations/uab-women-and-infants-center.