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Novant Health’s 40,000-square- foot Clemmons Medical Center is scheduled to open at 6:30 a.m. on Wednesday.

The first phase cost about $27.7 million, and the center includes a “no wait” emergency department, outpatient surgery center and imaging center. Novant is also planning a 20,000 square-foot medical office building next door, which is scheduled to be added in 2017.

The new medical center is located in Clemmons, about a 25-minute drive from the center of Yadkinville. It is the anchor for the Village Point Master Plan, a 125-acre mixed-use development site near Harper Road and the Interstate 40 interchange in Clemmons.

The medical center is meant to service western Forsyth and Davie counties and Yadkin County.

Chad Setliff, vice president for Clemmons Medical Center, stops briefly after giving a tour of the new facility. It’s a few days before the new medical center’s official opening, but employees are already at work.

In one of the waiting rooms, Setliff points at the different colors. He mentions how earth-toned colors are especially good for patients and their families. Studying the colors in the rooms is one of several ways the medical center’s leaders have done their homework.

Another relatively new concept that they’ve been studying is the “no wait’” emergency department.

With a “no wait” ED, when a patient first enters the main admitting area, a nurse determines the treatment the patient needs. Next, patients go into an examination room to visit with a physician. After examination and if needed, the patient can go to a post-exam room while the physicians wait for lab tests or X-rays. This method is meant to save time from the initial examination room so physicians can see the next patients more quickly.

Pat York is the manager of radiology and a long-time Yadkin County resident, said she believes Yadkin County residents will be able to make good use of the facility.

“I know people who think, “Oh my, I have to go to Winston to get a procedure done,’” she says. “They really dread driving into a metropolitan area,” she says in a promotional piece released from Clemmons Medical Center.

For more information, visit www.clemmonsmedicalcenter.org.