After a full year under its belt, Georgia Southern’s new health services building has flourished into a better functioning service for faculty and students since its move to Plant Drive.

“It is a huge improvement from our prior location. The transition was pretty seamless so we have worked out most of the kinks related to occupying a new space, ” Brian Deloach, M.D., GS’ medical director, said.

The new health services building is about 40,000-square-feet compared to its original size of 13,500-square-feet, thus allowing there to be three times more exam rooms than the previous one, according to GS’ Health Services website.

The new building now offers new features such as physical therapy, an eye care clinic and expansions to pharmacy operations, x-ray, laboratory and immunization areas.

Students asked for a better location and parking close to the facility and Georgia Southern added on-campus designated parking and 15-minute emergency parking spaces for easy access, in response to these requests.

With these new additions, healthcare services can offer better privacy, efficiency and improvement of workflow, according to Deloach.

“Wait times have been reduced, and it just has a cleaner, more friendly feel to it,” Deloach said.

Check-in used to be human operated and ran, but with the placement of six electronic kiosks, this cuts the wait time by allowing the check-in process to be quicker and self-operated.

Deloach interacted and visited with other doctors around the community and said that they have all been impressed with the level of service the new building can offer.

“We [the health services staff] definitely are pleased with the new facility and none of [the new additions] would have been possible in the old building,” Deloach said.

Students, overall, have had positive feedback regarding the new building.

“I think [health services are] very effective, quick but personal,” Alanna McMahan, junior pre-med biology major, said.

GS students now have access to a state-of-the-art facility, as well as, cost-effective quality care.

“I haven’t personally gone [to health services] yet, but going off my friends, they have been able to visit a doctor, get tests done, get prescriptions filled and leave within an hour,” Ty Moore, undeclared freshman, said. “For any doctors office that’s really fast.”