By Michael Motes

The official dedication of the area's newest hospital is scheduled for Sunday, February 12, with Archbishop Donnellan and Georgia's senior senator among those on the program.

St. Joseph's Hospital, known for nearly a century as St. Joseph's Infirmary, will be dedicated at 2 p.m. at the new location at 5665 Peachtree Dunwoody Road, just inside the north perimeter. The public is invited to the ceremony.

Archbishop Donnellan is scheduled to deliver the invocation, bless the building and lay the cornerstone. Senator Herman Talmadge will deliver the keynote address at the dedication.

The ceremony will also include the Marist High School Band and Color Guard, the Archbishop Gerald P. O'Hara General Assembly Knights of Columbus and numerous religious, hospital and public officials. Rawson Haverty, chairman of the hospital's board of directors, is serving as chairman for the overall program.

Commenting on the change from Infirmary to Hospital, Sister Mary Brian, president of the new $3 million facility, said, "The word 'infirmary' is a word which the public may have difficulty understanding. We are simply changing our name to indicate what we have been for many years -- a hospital."

Officially, the complex will be St. Joseph's Hospital of Atlanta, Inc., to distinguish it from other St. Joseph's Hospitals throughout the country, but the Atlanta institution will commonly be referred to as "St. Joseph's Hospital."

The name change is an outward indication of a significant transition for the hospital, Sister Brian said. "We have a new facility in north Atlanta and it seems appropriate that we have a new name to designate our health care role," she said.

The 300-bed hospital, set on a 32-acre site, is an innovative design featuring twin patient towers on a rectangular base. The firm of Abreu and Robeson, Inc., designed the structure.

Medical and surgical patients will receive care in private rooms surrounding circular nursing stations. Most patient services and office areas are located on the ground and main floors.

Among the many facilities the new hospital will offer is an automated chemistry machine, the first of its kind in an Atlanta hospital.

The machine, Sequential Multiple Analysis plus Computer (SMAC), is a computer-controlled clinical analyzer providing rapid, accurate and reliable analyses for 23 chemical procedures.

All analyses, performed on a few drops of blood, are rapidly tested simultaneously at a rate of 150 samples per hour, or 3,496 chemical procedures per hour.

The new machine will save both time and money. The built-in computer assumes many of the tasks that formerly required the time and skill of medical technologists.

Without SMAC, three medical technologists would be required to work one month by non-automated means. The cost for the procedures would be approximately $220, whereas analyses by SMAC would cost less than $50.

SMAC will also save time in calculating and recording patient data. In the past, a physician might wait hours for results from specimen or blood tests. With SMAC, the tests results are on the patients' charts shortly after the specimen and samples are taken.

SMAC is described as "easy to operate and protected against operator-initiated errors." Three St. Joseph's medical technologists have received operational training from technicians of the Technicon Corporation, producers of the machine, in New York.

Following the February 12 dedication program, the new hospital will be open for public tours until 5 p.m.