Thomas Hospital opens new $40M, 4-story patient tower in Fairhope

Thomas Hospital celebrated a major expansion Tuesday, Aug. 11, cutting the ribbon on a new four-story Patient Care Tower designed to meet Baldwin County’s growing healthcare needs.

Thomas Hospital’s new patient tower: 125,000 square feet, $40 million

The $40 million project broke ground in January 2025 and wrapped about a month ahead of schedule. The 125,000-square-foot, cast-in-place concrete tower is supported on auger cast piling, according to Geotechnical Engineering Testing, Inc., the firm that handled the project’s soils and foundation work.

The tower includes:

• 25 new medical-surgical beds on the second floor
• A four-room cardiac catheterization suite with dedicated recovery areas, expected to be fully operational by 2027
• Ground-level physician parking
• An additional shelled floor for future expansion engineered to support a larger tower down the road, if the hospital chooses to build one
• A rooftop helicopter pad to speed up emergency transport

Hospital staff began admitting patients to the new beds the same day the tower opened.

Inside Thomas Hospital’s tech-forward patient rooms

The new rooms are equipped with:

• Motion sensors
• iPads for patient-health team communication
• Two-way video systems for doctor-patient consultations
• Fall-prevention features like bed pressure sensors + toilet-seat sensors

Infirmary Health President and CEO Mark Nix said the hospital has been operating at or above capacity for years, making the added space a needed relief for the community.