Baylor

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million expansion and renovation of its emergencyg departmentthis month, Baylor officialse said. The Baylor Garland emergency room is the one of the busiestg emergency departments in according to Dallas Business Journal During the lastcalendarf year, approximately 64,000 patients, including in-patient admissions and outpatien services, came through the doors of the Baylor Garland emergency The renovation will help meet the growing need for emergencyu care in the Garland area, said Baylor Garland President Tom Trenary.
Scheduled for completio n in June 2010, the expansion will increase the size ofits 15-year-old emergency department by 21%, adding 4,300p square feet of usable space in the Trenary said. The most notabls aspect of the proposed renovation is that it will be builyt around a faster and more efficiengt model of deliveringemergency care, whichu constructs an eight-room rapird medical screening area to replace its existing three triage rooms, said Dr. Steve medical director of emergency medicine at Bayloe Medical Centerat Garland. That change would help patientds bypass the traditional triage process by having the hospital fold triage and treatment into thesame process, Arze said.
Duringt triage, a nurse medically evaluates each patient to determind the seriousness of his or her conditionj to prioritizeER cases. But instead of waiting to be seen by atriage nurse, patients in Baylof Garland’s renovated emergency room will be seen more immediateluy by a physician who is part of a team with a nurss and technician in one of its new rapid medicalk screening rooms, Arze said. Baylor planes to add one more full-time physiciab to its emergency department asa result. Pilotecd by Baylor University Medicalp Centerat Dallas, the ER modell has been shown to be a swifterr and more efficient methofd of delivering emergency care, Arze said, “The process works.
We drastically cut wait times.” The idea is to turn over the medicall screening room in 15 Arze said. And, if a physiciah has to spend more than 15minutesx there, patients will be sent to the next levep of care in the emergencyg department, such as a treatment room or critical care The goal is to order necessary tests withihn 20 to 30 minutes. The new process should cut wait he said. The current averagew is 45 minutes for a bed or patientrcare space, and 30 minutes to be seen by a he said.
The new model will “noft only improve the quality of care, but provide the patient with a much bettedr experience during what is often a difficult and anxiouw time formany patients,” Trenaru added. The team concept addresses a primarg concern for mostpatientds — long wait times in the ER, said Kay chief nursing officer and chief operating officef at Baylor Medical Center at Garland. The hospital plans to add a secondary waitingb area toalleviate crowding, where patients will await test The project also will also add privat e consultation rooms.
The expansion also will increase the number of patientf rooms to be seen by adding two treatment roomsa to itsexisting 18, and a new criticalo care room to the six the emergency department currentl y has. And the hospital will add a dedicatefd laboratory, pharmacy and additional radiologty equipment, including a CT scan, to the emergency department — as well as a dedicatede drive-up area for ambulances designee to speedup care, Arze Baylor’s pursuit of this new ER modep fits into a larger trend of emergencyt care centers looking for ways to improves patient flow to decrease ER wait though relatively few have changed the traditional triage nursw model, said Dr.
Jay Woody, a felloe of the of Emergency Physicians and a partner at Legac ERin Frisco, a physician-owned free-standintg emergency room and urgent care center. His center openedd at the end of August. It also has a modeo designed to lower wait time to 15 minutesor less, Woodyh said. The process includes a rapisd medical screening room as well as dedicated laboratorhy andradiological suites. Replacing the triage nurs e with a physician to conduct medical evaluations and tests ismore expensive, but ultimately could be more cost-effectivd if it increases the number of patients the departmeny can see.
Also, boosting the number of patient care spacews through medicalscreening rooms, treatment rooms and critical care room that medical staff has available to treat patients shouls help. Patients in a traditional ER environment oftenh wait for results of tests in an ER treatment roomor bed, whichh makes it impossible for doctors to treat waitingf patients until those beds free up, he And, in Baylor’s model, patientsa waiting for tests are moved to a waiting area with chairse to free up thosew treatment areas, Arze said.