The new Martha’s Vineyard Hospital is open for business. The freshly painted halls are bustling with medical staff, and state-of-the-art stretchers sit empty in the emergency room hallway.

And this week most of the rooms are occupied.

All went smoothly on moving day, just before dawn on Tuesday, said hospital president and chief executive officer Timothy Walsh, although he admitted that the hospital received a surprise on its first day of business in the new building in the form of unusually heavy patient traffic. The emergency room saw 64 patients in the first 24 hours, far more than expected.

But there were no glitches. “The staff response was really good. We look at it as a bit of a test,” Mr. Walsh said.

He said 64 patients is what the emergency room sees in a day in August, not June. But by yesterday, things were back to normal and the emergency room was mostly quiet.

Beginning Tuesday at about 3:30 a.m., staffing levels at the hospital were doubled and in some cases tripled for about 72 hours, as the move took place from the old 1972 building into the new 2010 building.

As might be expected, on Wednesday Mr. Walsh said: “The hardest part is the technology part. We are still trying to get the phone system working right.”

The move was handled like a mock emergency drill.

As it turned out, the high level of alertness was justified, when an ambulance pulled up to the emergency room at 4:45 a.m., carrying a patient who was suffering from chest pains.

At 4:49 a.m. the old emergency room was closed officially for good, and a call was made to the communications center to alert all future public safety vehicles of the change. A large sign went up at the entrance to the old E.R., and yellow caution tape crisscrossed the doors.

In a brief tour of the new facility on Wednesday morning, Carol Bardwell, chief nurse executive, said 22 patients, one of them an infant, were moved from the old building to the new hospital. She said a core group of 15 to 20 EMTs helped push stretchers and carry gear.

“By 8:30 a.m. all the patients were moved,” Mrs. Bardwell said.

And patients who had been sharing a room with someone else on Monday night found themselves in private rooms on Tuesday morning; the acute care rooms in the new hospital are all private rooms with water views across the Vineyard Haven outer harbor.

Mrs. Bardwell said she could recall when she began working at the hospital in the 1970s. “Back then it was a well-equipped hospital. This is exciting,” she said.

For the many professionals who have developed routines of knowing precisely how to step and move between beds and equipment, the transition has been a bit of an adventure. “Nobody likes change,” Mrs. Bardwell said. “To make it easier, just before the start of each shift, we make sure we go over where everything is. For instance, we talk about where the crash cart is,” the senior staff nurse said.

For patients, of course, the change is nothing but an improvement in a spacious new facility painted in soothing, muted colors. Sounds are hushed.

The hospital is licensed for 25 beds: four maternity, three intensive care, one pediatric and 17 medical surgical beds.

There are 16 rooms in the emergency room and 16 stretchers. All beds and stretchers are new, and far more comfortable, Mrs. Bardwell said.

As of yesterday, the hospital had three empty beds.

Mrs. Bardwell said the emergency room is far more private than the outdated and overcrowded emergency room that is now closed and empty. Mrs. Bardwell participated in some of the planning that went into designing the emergency room to make sure it meets the needs of a small Island community. In the old emergency room, there was very little privacy, with examining rooms separated only by curtains. In the new emergency room, every exam room has a door. Mrs. Bardwell said privacy is extra important on the Island, where most people know each other.

Mrs. Bardwell’s office will remain in the old building, as will all administrative offices. She admitted that it has been a little jarring this week, moving back and forth between the old and new buildings. And seeing the old building now empty and dark? “It is eerie,” she said.