| ||
| Vol. 22, No. 8 |
| May 1, 2000 |
|
Extended Care Unit Cuts Length of Emergency Center Visits in Half Thanks to an innovative renovation, patients at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital's Emergency Center are getting better and faster treatment. An old Intensive Care Unit has been transformed into the Extended Care Unit, part of the Emergency Center. After only one month, emergency patients are waiting less and getting care more quickly. On average, the waiting time for patients in the Extended Care Unit and the Emergency Center has been cut in half, according to Dr. Frank Redmond. "It's lowered waiting time, increased patient satisfaction, and enhanced the quality of care," Dr. Redmond says. Armed with nine beds, the Extended Care Unit opened in January. It is there that hospital staff care for patients who are too sick to go home, but not sick enough to stay in the Emergency Center. It works as an extension of the Emergency Center, moving patients out of Emergency Center beds and decreasing the wait for all patients. Currently staffed with a physician, a nursing technician, and two registered nurses, the Extended Care Unit runs from 1 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Fridays and weekends. The operation may eventually run 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Because the expanded hou rs should further shorten the waiting period for patients, nurse manager Ty Permenter is looking forward to it. "Anytime we can decrease our patients' waiting time, we're going to do it," Permenter says. "So far, the patients have been very pleased, and we're happy when our patients go home happy." In the past, emergency center visits could seem long for some patients. The new Extended Care Unit is changing that. According to Permenter, the average patient stay in the Emergency Center in January was cut in half. "Patients are already suffering enough by the time they make it to the hospital," Dr. Redmond says. "It was really our mission to make sure that when they got here to St. Luke's, they could rest assured that their suffering would end as quickly as possible." - JOSH PLETTING
©2006 Texas Medical Center E-Mail: tmcinfo@texmedctr.tmc.edu URL: http://www.tmc.edu/tmcnews/05_01_00/page_12.html |