Expectant mothers and their families, critically ill patients and chronic migraine sufferers are among the thousands of patients who will benefit from the newly opened East Tower at Mercy Medical Center.

Following a week of ceremonies, Mercy officially opened all of its services in the tower to the public today. The six-floor, 239,000-square-foot expansion to the hospital faces Third Street south of University Avenue.

The new addition mirrors the open design found elsewhere at the hospital, with expansive carpeted lobby areas connected with open staircases and fronted by a glass atrium extending the height of the building that offers a panoramic view of downtown Des Moines.

The top three floors, Levels 2, 3 and 4 of the tower, are occupied by the Women & Infants’ Center, which provides comprehensive prenatal, delivery and care for newborns and their mothers, as well as a neonatal intensive care unit. The Intensive Care Unit and the Cardiac/Trauma and Surgical Intensive Care Unit are both located on Level 1.

Below that, on Level A, is the Ruan Neurosciences Center, which includes a neurology clinic and nationally certified center for multiple sclerosis patients. Also on Level A is a conference center that includes an auditorium, classrooms, meeting rooms and a board room.

The ground-level floor and main entrance, Level B, remains uncompleted. It will house state-of-the-art medical imaging devices that have yet to be delivered, including a new Magnetic Resonance Imaging machine and Positron Emission Tomography scanner. Mercy officials say they haven’t determined yet when these devices, which can take months to receive from the manufacturers, will be available. There are also plans for aspine center on that floor, which will be part of the Ruan Neuroscience Center.

From specially designed anti-static, easy-to-clean flooring on the patient floors to no-dust blinds enclosed in the glass of each room’s door and subdued lighting built into curved soffits, every element of the building was carefully selected to maximize patient safety and comfort, said Joe LeValley, Mercy’s senior vice president for planning and system development. More than 70 companies were involved in the planning, design and construction of the $80 million project.

Because the structure is twice the width of a conventional hospital tower, it allowed for nursing stations to be decentralized with patient rooms clustered around them rather than being spread down long hallways, LeValley said. The intensive care units, for instance, are divided into two critical-care areas, one a traditional ICU and the other a trauma/heart ICU, each with 16 beds. Every pair of rooms in these units has a V-shaped, laptop-equipped workstation outside it from which a nurse can observe patients through small windows.

All of the units in the East Tower have dedicated space to allow patients and their families to remain together. Even the ICU rooms are equipped with pullout couches and recliners, as are rooms in the expanded neonatal ICU unit, which features all private rooms.

The three floors of the Women & Infants’ Center have also been designed as a self-contained center with all the needed clinical services and amenities together, so that families can have a separate space for the entire experience, without having to interact with the rest of the hospital if they don’t want to, LeValley said.

During an employee walk-through and orientation conducted in the new wing last week, “we saw more smiles and pride than [we’ve seen] in a long time,” said David Vellinga, Mercy’s president and CEO. “They clearly recognize the benefits that this facility will bring to their patients and to their colleagues and staff. It allows them to provide care better, more effectively and efficiently.”