Erlanger President Kevin Spiegel said Thursday night that the hospital plans to include a new emergency department within the planned $200 million Children's Hospital Tower.
He said the upper six floors of the tower will include 120 private rooms for Children's Hospital patients.
The four lower floors will be dedicated to a new ED.
Mr. Spiegel said, "The current emergency department is 60 years old. Its design is 60 years old."
He said funding for the tower, to be located on the Third Street campus near the Health Department, would be from a bond issue as well as "philanthropy." He noted that local donors helped fund the Children's Outpatient Center that opened earlier this year, though there were many doubters that the money could be raised.
The new floors would have from 90-120 beds for emergency and Intensive Care patients.
Mr. Spiegel said the current facility is overcrowded, causing long patient waits at times.
He said one factor in the overcrowding is that Erlanger, which is the public hospital for Chattanooga and Hamilton County, gets 20,000 patients a year from Bradley County. He said, "There has to be a solution to deal with that county's problems.
The tower would have two separate lobbies - one for children and another for adults.
He said the hospital is trying to help deal with the ED load on Third Street by building a series of urgent care clinics. Three of those opened recently and a number of others are on the drawing board.
Mr. Spiegel said, "We're providing care to our patients where they live."
He said Erlanger is operating the seventh largest emergency department in the United States.