See below for a video from Patricia Mayne, Administrative Director of the Emergency Center, who will walk you through what to expect during an ER visit to SJH&MC.
Our goal in the Emergency Center is to work as a well-functioning team, so that you receive coordinated, efficient care. Our physicians, nurses, and techs, must anticipate your needs, and work to exceed your expectations. In addition, we work with many other areas of the hospital, which could include surgery, diagnostic imaging, registration, the lab, and many others.
We realize that our success is dependent on many different people inside and outside of the Emergency Center, and are continually working on how to improve on that teamwork approach. Read below to learn how the excellence in other areas of the hospital contributes to your medical care as an ER patient.
- Diagnostic Imaging. Our newly renovated ER has a dedicated CT and Diagnostic Radiology area to help reduce wait times and keep patients from having to travel outside the department. Diagnostic Imaging associates staff the area in the ER twenty-four hours a day, seven days a we ek, and perform over 55,000 emergency procedures each year. Turnaround time for radiographs required in the Emergency Center are among the best in the area.
- Registration. Patients who come to the ER just want to get to a bed, not stand at a desk and answer numerous questions. That’s why our Registration staff asks a few key questions at triage in order to identify you in our registration system quickly. The remainder of the registration process is completed at the bedside.
- Cath Lab. Patients having a heart attack need to move FAST to the Cath Lab. There's no other option to save heart muscle. We've worked to get the median time to the cardiac cath lab from the ER to just under 50 minutes. In December 2008, 100 percent of patients met this goal, which is 40 minutes faster than the nationwide recommendation.
- Information Technology (IT). Our IT team has helped us launch our electronic medical record process, called eCare. This system lets us do electronic triage, and has a new tracking board that gives nurses an “at a glance” look at how a patient’s care is progressing, even showing a clock as to when you arrive, so we can keep your care on track time-wise.
- Lab. To diagnose you properly, lab testing may be needed. Our lab processes more than 26,000 labs for the Emergency Center each month, usually with a turnaround time of 30 minutes or less.
- Environmental Services. Clean rooms are essential. Our professional staff of environmental services associates take great pride in providing cleanliness in the hospital, regularly tracking satisfaction scores and turn-around times for cleaning rooms.
- Bed desk. Approximately 20 percent of Emergency patients are admitted into the hospital. Our bed desk helps coordinate that care, and handles the complex process of getting patients admitted to a unit.
We also have made numerous operational improvements designed to enhance your care and experience in our Emergency Center. One of recent successes was scientifically looking at the process from arrival to discharge, and from arrival to inpatient bed, and looking for ways to reduce waste and improve efficiency. As a result, we have been able to provide significantly better turn-around times for completing treatment.
