VALDOSTA — The sign in front of South Georgia Medical Center’s Smith Northview Campus says “no emergency services.”

That’s about to change.

SGMC is working to have an emergency room up and running at its North Valdosta Road facility in early December, said Johnny Ball, SGMC’s vice president for marketing and public affairs. Smith Northview does not currently handle emergency cases.

Many of the details of getting the ER up and running are still being worked out, he said. Ball added the emergency room project is a step toward resurrecting Smith Northview as a full-service hospital.

SGMC undertook the Smith Northview emergency room project out of patient need and community interest, Ball said.

The patient load at SGMC’s existing emergency room at the hospital’s main North Patterson Street building was a factor in the decision, he said.

“We have one of the busiest ERs in the area,” Ball said. “(A Smith Northview ER) would help with emergency room patient throughput.”

There has also been community interest in expanding services in the north Valdosta area, he said.

Plans call for Smith Northview’s walk-in urgent care facility to move to another building nearby, with the new emergency department being set up in the main building after that, Ball said. Emergency room cases would enter through Smith Northview’s main entrance, he said.

The ER facility will use Smith Northview’s current infrastructure, according to a statement from SGMC. The building has 45 inpatient beds and space for a 12-room emergency department, according to an earlier report.

The Smith Northview facility opened in 2002 as a privately owned full service hospital — complete with an ER — not connected to SGMC. It was descended from the old Smith Hospital in Hahira, founded in 1943.

In 2011, the owner of Smith Northview, AMERIS Health Systems, sold the hospital to SGMC, citing government regulations as making the running of private hospitals more difficult.

Under SGMC, the facility’s role has shifted through the years. At first, SGMC continued to run Smith Northview as a hospital; in 2015, SGMC closed Smith Northview as a hospital, including its emergency room and converted it into a walk-in urgent care facility.

At the height of the coronavirus pandemic, SGMC received emergency permission from the state to use Smith Northview’s 45-bed capacity for inpatient cases not infected with COVID-19. It was also the location for several months of a drive-thru COVID-19 testing site.

Now, aside from the urgent care facility, some surgical procedures are carried out at Smith Northview, which also hosts a sleep center.