One of the Nation’s Most Efficient Emergency Rooms
The old system whereby patients were triaged by a nurse, registered by a clerk and then sent back to the triage nurse and the waiting room was thrown out. Instead, hospital staff spend much of their time moving around the patients. For example, blood tests and blood pressure tests are now often done in the waiting room and a mobile suture cart means patients can be stitched up where they sit.
Full article on Seven Oaks ER.
If you have a medical emergency, you can either drive to the ER or call an ambulance. Experts say in a real emergency, call an ambulance because those patients take priority over walk-in patients.
But maybe instead of a triage system, they could cut out the middleman by having the ambulance staff take care of your problem at your house with no need to cart you to the hospital.
Emergency rooms have got to be the worst places on earth. The mobile cart is probably a good idea. And the windows/natural light sound great.
But I’m not sure that I want my wound stitched in front of the entire waiting room. How do they ensure privacy?
Why not create a sort of two-stage process whereby the more serious patients get sent to a more rigorous setting and the less serious get their own cubicle in a room directly adjacent to the waiting room?
Maybe I just don’t like being in a waiting room.
Doc in the Box and other alternatives to emergency rooms are much preferable.