On Thursday, November 19, the Emergency Department at St Joseph will be moved and consolidated with the Memorial Campus Emergency Department.
All patients requiring emergency care should go to the Memorial Campus Emergency Department for Treatment.
Why Consolidate Memorial and St Joseph Campus Emergency Departments?
Improve quality of care for our patients and efficiency with which they receive care - Consolidation will reduce inefficiencies created by maintaining two fully-functional Emergency Departments and save in excess of $1.3 million annually. The addition of a new expedited patient assessment and care process has already significantly reduced patient waiting times. The new system combines rapid assessment of patients and specialized teams of physicians, nurses and techs to keep patients moving efficiently through their treatment.
A majority of our patients are already seen on the Memorial Campus - Mission Hospital's two Emergency Departments saw a total of 100,070 patients during fiscal year 2009. About 70 percent of those came to the Memorial Campus ED, the remaining 30 percent to St. Joseph.
Limit confusion of where to go during a medical emergency - Maintaining two Emergency Departments can be confusing to our patients, especially during a medical emergency. Patients would often go to the wrong ED for their initial assessment, resulting in unnecessary delays in treatment.
Outdated Facilities - The Emergency Department facility on the St. Joseph Campus has become outdated and too small to accommodate new emergency care equipment and changing technology. The space on the St. Joseph Campus will now be used as an admitting unit for psychiatric patients. St. Joseph is already home to the region's largest inpatient psychiatric facility, with separate units for children, adolescents, adults and adults. Adding the admitting unit allows us to take better care of these patients.
What is changing in the facilities?
On the Memorial Campus:
- An eight-bed Chest Pain Observation area has been added for low-risk patients experiencing chest pain, where they can receive further evaluation. This new unit frees up space in the Emergency Department for critical cardiac patients. It encourages people to come to the Emergency Department to make sure that their chest pain is not a heart attack.
- All employees currently at the St Joseph ED will be moved to the Memorial ED; there has been no loss of personnel during the consolidation.
- Psychiatric patients will now go to the Memorial ED and receive medical assessment and clearance, then be transported to the St. Joseph for psychiatric evaluation area for further treatment and placement.
On the St. Joseph Campus:
- ED space is being redesigned to accommodate patients awaiting admission into the 57-bed inpatient psychiatric unit at St. Joseph, or transport to another facility.
- The psychiatric evaluation area is being expanded.
- A new admission area separate from the psychiatric facilities is being developed for patients from the Western North Carolina region who are being directly admitted to St. Joseph for medical care or surgery.
