Franciscan Hospital and Healthcare has something they want to share with the community. After 18 months of planning and hard work, the new emergency department is scheduled to open in just a few weeks. The good folks at Franciscan threw a pre-opening sneak peek event this weekend, open to the public, and we were invited to visit.
Marla Hoyer-Lareau, Chief Nursing Officer and Vice President of Patient Services said, “Today’s open house is a great opportunity for the public to come in and see what we’ve created here. It’s a chance for them to come in, see what we’ve worked so hard to put together. We wanted to do this before the official opening because it’s much harder obviously to properly showcase this type of thing when there are actual patients present.”
Janet Doms, Administrative Director of Emergency Services for Franciscan Alliance added, “This will be a full-service emergency department, capable of treating all patients who present with any medical emergency they may have. We designed and built this facility to allow us to provide the highest level of care to the patient, and to streamline the triage process, which will allow us to provide that care as quickly as possible to the patient, and will drastically cut down on the amount of time a patient has to wait before they can be seen by a nurse or physician.”
“We have developed what is called a ‘vertical care track,’ which is a system of treatment in which those patients who have less acute illness or injury can be attended to in our triage area, allowing the more seriously ill to move directly to one of our 12 patient care rooms in our main emergency department.”
Hoyer-Larue agreed and added that there are also plans to open an additional 24-bed medical/surgical unit, to expand their overall capacity. They will also be adding an on-site chapel. Overall, they will be adding roughly 80,000 square feet of space to the facilities, once the renovations are complete.
Matthew Eddy, EMS coordinator said, “We have already reached out to local EMS agencies. It’s very important that people understand that this is not just a stand-alone ER; it’s fully-functional, and not only that, but we have worked with a goal of making it as ‘EMS-friendly’ as possible.”
“We designed this addition from the ground up to make the process of providing the best patient care, beginning from the ground-up, through the layout of the design. All the areas that might be needed to provide care and treatment to someone in need of emergency medical care are right here, adjacent to this facility. We have a CT-scan room right through that door…” said Hoyer-Lareau, motioning at a door through the trauma room, “and there are also X-ray and patient imaging, as well as a full lab for bloodwork. Everything that our staff will need will be right where they need it.”