UK Hospital’s new emergency department officially opened to the public on Wednesday. The new facility is twice as large as the old one, and is roughly equivalent to the size of a football field. It is the only Level 1 Trauma Center in Central and Eastern Kentucky.

Several politicians, including Mayor Jim Newberry, Congressman Ben Chandler and Kentucky State Senate President David Williams, along with UK HealthCare administrators, celebrated the opening of the new emergency department on July 12. The state-of-the-art, 40,000-square-foot facility has been equipped with advanced monitoring and life-support systems.

“There is not a more sophisticated facility in the world than our new emergency department at UK,” said Dr. Michael Karpf, UK’s executive vice president for health affairs, in a news release. “In the event of a large-scale emergency, the UK Chandler Emergency Department and its highly trained professionals will prove invaluable for our entire community and this region.”

The facility is made up of three centers: the Makenna David Pediatric Emergency Center with a separate entrance, and registration and waiting areas, the Level 1 Trauma Center and an Adult Emergency Center.

The new emergency department is part of the first phase of UK HealthCare’s $760 million expansion. A second part of the project — the first two floors of a 12-story patient care facility — is expected to be completed in 2011.

“We should all be very proud, and find great peace of mind, in having one of the world’s most advanced emergency car centers here in the Bluegrass,” UK President Lee Todd said at the ceremony. “We see this as a milestone, as our new hospital takes shape and we continue to advance health care for Kentucky and beyond.”

For more information on the new UK Hospital emergency department, visit www.ukhealthcare.uky.edu/new/ED/index.asp.