New parents in Cobb County just got a serious boost in backup. Wellstar Kennestone Regional Medical Center has started caring for its tiniest patients in a newly opened neonatal intensive care unit inside the hospital's Yellow Tower, shifting dozens of newborns into the space after months of planning. The reimagined NICU focuses on private rooms, expanded family areas and upgraded monitoring so parents can stay close to babies who need specialized care. Hospital leaders say the setup should keep more newborns in Marietta instead of sending them to hospitals farther from home.
Staff moved 44 newborns into the new NICU in a carefully choreographed transfer, according to CBS News Atlanta. Video from the station highlights private rooms and bedside family spaces that hospital leaders say are designed to ease stress and support bonding throughout what can be some of the longest and hardest days a family faces.
What's Inside the New NICU
Wellstar describes the unit as a 49-bed next-generation NICU that includes a centralized milk lab to handle fortified human milk and donor milk, six couplet care rooms where mothers and babies can remain together when it is medically safe, and advanced monitoring systems to support high-acuity neonatal care, according to Wellstar. Leaders say the design leans heavily on natural light, private space and family-centered details in an effort to make lengthy NICU stays less isolating for parents.
Part of a Bigger Build
The NICU is housed inside the Yellow Tower, a nine-story patient building that opened to patients on April 15 and represents about a $400 million investment in the Kennestone campus, HCO News reported. The expansion also boosted specialty capacity across cardiology, neurology, oncology and surgical services.
"The new NICU at Wellstar Kennestone provides more than advanced technology," Dr. Carrie Stinson said, according to Wellstar. Varma Rameswar, vice president of pediatric operations, said the unit "redefines what's possible in neonatal care" by expanding access to specialized services closer to home.
Why This Matters Locally
Georgia continues to wrestle with high rates of preterm birth and infant mortality, which makes having strong NICU capacity nearby a very real factor in family outcomes. The March of Dimes puts the state's 2023 infant mortality rate at about 7.0 deaths per 1,000 live births and estimates Georgia's 2024 preterm birth rate at around 11.8 percent. The Georgia Department of Public Health has emphasized perinatal regionalization as a strategy to improve outcomes for newborns.
The timing also lines up with Kennestone's role as a training hub. Augusta University's Medical College of Georgia operates an MCG Atlanta clinical campus at the hospital, and university leaders visited Kennestone in June to review clinical training, according to Augusta University. Hospital and university officials say expanding training capacity is a key piece of a longer-term effort to grow the neonatal and maternal workforce across the region.
For families, the new unit promises more specialized care close to home and private rooms that make it easier to stay near a hospitalized newborn around the clock. Hospital officials say the NICU is now up and running, with staff continuing to phase in services as needed.
