As Fort Worth grows, so do its emergency rooms.
The latest is now on view at Fort Worth’s Baylor Scott & White All Saints Medical Center. The new 36,300-square-foot emergency department (ED) opens at 7 a.m. Aug. 28 after 16 months of design, construction and expansion.
The addition to the All Saints campus not only increases available beds, but doubles the square footage of the previous emergency department and brings new technology to the hospital. The department will be open 24/7, 365 days a year and will offer free valet parking.
Emergency Director Faye Collins said her favorite aspect of the new department is “how patient-centered it is.”
“There was a lot of thought that went into how to make this more comfortable, more soothing, make our care more efficient for the patients and have more privacy,” she said.
The architect for the facility was HKS Architects and MedCo Construction was the contractor for the $24 million project. Local Fort Worth artwork decorates the walls. Of the total cost, about $10 million was raised by donors who are recognized on a donor wall in the waiting room.
The facility also includes two trauma rooms, four triage rooms and 34 treatment rooms. There is also shell space that can be used to expand and add four more exam rooms and one additional trauma room if needed.
Some of the rooms also serve special purposes: two rooms for patients needing mental health treatment such as suicide prevention, an isolation room, a decontamination room, two negative pressure rooms for treating those with diseases such as chickenpox and tuberculosis, and the family room.
If the department gets backed up, triage rooms can be used to quickly screen patients to assess their needs and send them back to the waiting room.
An alcove next to the triage rooms serves as a sub-waiting area for patients with less urgent needs. Patients can have bloodwork or tests run quickly and can await their results in the sub-waiting area.
The family room serves as a grieving space for those who have received a tough diagnosis or has lost a loved one.
For the isolation room, also called an ante room, Collins says a lot of consideration for that came from Ebola and other outbreak concerns. It is a series of connected rooms, one for staff to suit up in hazmat suits, one patient room in the middle, and a room at the end to take off the hazmat suit and leave the area.
Additionally, an imaging area includes a 64-slice computed tomography (CT) scanner, X-ray room and ultrasound exam room.
The second “floor” of the facility is almost exclusively devoted to the department’s new all-weather heated helipad for transporting patients in critical care. The previous emergency department was using the helipad about 10-20 times a month, Collins said, but with the new above-ground-level location the hospital expects usage to increase.
From the helipad a patient can be taken to a trauma room on the ground floor in less than two minutes. The trauma rooms are located near the elevator from the helipad and are also near the ambulance entrance.
Collins says the emergency department partnered with MedStar to design the ambulance entrance to make it “just how they wanted it, so we can serve them better.”
About 600 ambulances arrived at the All Saints Emergency Department in July, according to MedStar, and getting high-acuity patients to trauma rooms and cared for as quickly as possible is a priority of the department.
This is why the trauma rooms, which are about the size of a two-car garage or larger, have been upgraded to include booms that hold all the necessary gasses and the cardiac monitor, a TV screen to project the cardiac monitor, a bariatric monitor and more.
“All the latest technology that you can get, we put it into these trauma rooms,” Collins said, including a rapid infuser. “It can rapidly heat blood or large amounts of fluid and be infused really quickly so you can give warm, fast fluids. These are really important for trauma patients.”
Both the rapid infuser and the blanket warmers are important because, Collins says, “One of the most important things you can do for a trauma patient is keep them warm.”
Collins estimates that 30-40 patients are seen in the trauma rooms monthly and that about 120 people visit the emergency department every day, for about 3,600 patients per month.
The department includes a check-in station staffed by nurses and 50-person waiting room.
According to Baylor All Saints President Mike Sanborn, the average door-to-doctor time is 17 minutes, with door-to-nurse time at about three minutes.
Behind the doors to the waiting area there are three nurses’ stations dispersed near exam room hubs. Although some of the rooms can be used for specialty purposes, all are set up to take any patient.
All nurses’ and doctors’ ID badges will include a small button that works as both a GPS locator and a panic button to send for help when needed.
Sanborn said the old emergency department might be converted into a space for medical staff education within the next year.
“We are thinking about dedicating it to medical staff training and both education for the local medical schools as well as residents,” Sanborn said, adding that his favorite part of the new facility is the design and flow.
“I think it’s designed by emergency providers to take care of emergency patients and I think [in] the design aspect it seems they’ve thought of everything to have a good patient experience, but also to make sure patients are being treated as quickly as possible.”