VALDOSTA — The doors to South Georgia Medical Center’s new Walk-In Laboratory are scheduled to open at 6:30 a.m. on Tuesday, July 6. It’s a day much anticipated by laboratory staff members and medical center officials.

“We are very excited,” said Lorraine Okuma, laboratory manager. “We have been working on this transition for nearly two years. Our move will bring the Walk-In Laboratory up to the level of all other medical center facilities.”

SGMC’s Walk-In Laboratory has been housed in a 720-square-foot, three-room trailer in the Outpatient Center parking lot for six years. That facility will close permanently at noon Friday, Okuma said.

Four days later, the Walk-In Laboratory will reopen in Suite 120 of the Doctors Office Building, at the corner of Ashley Street and Pendleton Drive. The new location offers 1,600 square feet of space, a large waiting area, offices and private testing rooms.

“It’s so much bigger,” Okuma said. “It’s huge. We’re going to have so much more room. Things will be more streamlined. Hopefully, things will flow faster for patients. It’s simply nicer, and it’s more convenient.”

The new Walk-In Laboratory will allow staff members to serve twice as many patients simultaneously than the old location.

There also is the added convenience for laboratory employees who have to transport specimens to SGMC’s main laboratory each hour. The Doctors Office Building is much closer to the main laboratory than the trailer in the parking lot.

On average, the Walk-In Laboratory sees 50 to 70 patients each day. Any physician is eligible to send patients to the facility for specimen collection. All they need is a signed set of orders with diagnostic codes as required by law.

Okuma said she hopes more people will take advantage of SGMC’s new Walk-In Laboratory.

The staff of the Outpatient Laboratory on the second floor of the Doctors Office Building will also move into the first floor Walk-In Laboratory facility.

SGMC’s Walk-In Laboratory will serve patients from 6:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. every Monday through Friday.



To contact reporter Jessica Pope, please call 244-3400, ext. 255.