Quick Search

Winston-Salem, NC - Forsyth Medical Center broke ground Wednesday, July 30 on a new $15.8 million Emergency Department that will help ease overcrowding, decrease patient wait time and expand the level of service for patients. The new Emergency Deparment will include approximately 55,000 square feet of new space - enough to treat 110,000 patients a yeare. That's more than double the volume the current Emergency Department was designed to handle.

"The current ED was built to handle 56,000 patients a year," says Robin Voss, RN, director of emergency and trauma services at Forsyth. "Emergency Department visits at Forsyth have increased by 15 percent since 1999. That's partly due to an aging population, but also because more and more people are relying on the Emergency Department as their primary source of medical care. We have become the front door to the hospital."

When the new Emergency Department is completed in September 2004, it will include a total of 80 beds divided into several units - major, minor, critical decision, fast track, express admit and behavioral health. The department also includes expanded space for triage, radiology, emergency medical services and a main waiting area that includes a children's play center and an Internet cafe.

Patients in need of special care will also have dedicated space. The Emergency Department will include a Family Grieving Room and a dedicated area for the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners (SANE) program for sexual assault victims.

"A team of doctors, nurses, other hospital staff, and emergency medical services (EMS)personnel spent two years planning the location, look and layout of the new department," Voss said. "The new space will allow us to plan for long-term growth and expansion, plan for flexibility, minimize costs, incrase the number of beds in the emergency department and decrease wait times."

For example, the design features separate walk-in and EMS entrances, three triage rooms where nurses assess patients upon arrival and assign them to treatment rooms, bedside registration, and a tracking system to ensure patients receive the treatment they need when they need it. The new department also allows access to diagnostic technology with four x-ray rooms and a CT scanner.

"We believe the new department will demonstrate to the community that the future of emergency medicine is here at Forsyth Medical Center," Voss said.

Hospital emergency departments across the country are experiencing a similar increase in demand. According to the American Hospital Association, 62 percent of all hospitals' emergency departments are at or over capacity. And in the last five years, emergency department utilization rates have gone up seven percent and the number of emergency department visits has gone up 14 percent. The increase in demand is driven by an aging population, changes in technology that allow hospital staff to save more lives and do more for more people, and a scaling back of managed care practices that previously restricted consumers' use of emergency departments.