LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Flags fluttered in front of the Norton West Louisville Hospital for opening day, over a hundred patients visiting after hundreds more people attended Friday's ribbon cutting ceremony.
"Everybody here is friendly, they nice, they professional," Lionel Moore said after switching his primary care to the new hospital. "That's what everybody is looking for."
Now it's all close to home for people like Jesstin Devoe.
"Having the food pantry, having a pharmacy, it just makes everything a little more accessible for the people in the west end that wasn't accessible to us at first," he said, picking up the hospital as his primary care provider, a whole fifteen minutes closer than his last.
But more than accessible, Dr. Steve Kelty says the imaging and sterilization equipment used for surgeries at the Norton West Louisville Hospital is the best in the state.
"We just did a procedure today with equipment that had not been used in the state of Kentucky ever before an hour ago," the general surgeon said after the hospital's first major procedure.
Hanging over the building's emergency department is its second-floor Zen garden. The clear view of downtown serves as a reminder of the long drive — or ride — people had to make for medical care before the new building.
"Some buses don't go that direction," Moore said. "You catch the Broadway, you gotta walk a distance to get to the hospital," he remarked of the old TARC line he had to ride. "Now this is in the west end, now you can be real close. So the bus'll bring you here, you can get off at the Nia Center, come straight over here."
He grew up five blocks away and still has plenty of family in the area, which is why he says this is a more convenient place to see his doctors.
"And it's gonna help a lot of people in the west end," Moore added.
Even outside the west end, expecting mother Kaylee Thompson had her cardiology appointment on opening day, visiting from Jeffersonville, Indiana.
"The atmosphere was great. They went through everything. And it was just pretty nice, overall," she said.
Devoe agrees, it's part of a west end renaissance.
"It just brings a lot more opportunities for us and maybe a lot more opportunities to get different businesses involved as well," he said.
He's hopeful it means more will move to the area soon.
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