Folks,
I appreciate everyone’s support and enthusiasm and patience during this first week of transition to Level 5 as our emergency room provider. We knew going into this kind of personnel change it will take some time to get all the permanent players in, the kinks worked out, and get used to everyone’s preferences. That is still the case 6 days into it and will be for some time to come. Having said that, in the first week I think we are seeing signs of what the future holds: decreased wait times, increased (appropriate admissions), enhanced communication (medical staff unsolicited—some of our most vocal critics—have offered up positive feedback on good doctor-to-doctor discussions taking place in regards to patient care).
Probably one of the biggest paradigm shifts that I want to make sure everyone is aware of is the status of Fast Track. Fast Track as we have come to know it at VVRMC is no longer. Moving forward, every resource in the emergency room is fair game to place a patient in a bed. Mid-levels and nurses who staffed only the Fast Track area will be pulled back into the main ED and we will deploy resources in a teamwork fashion wherever the patient need is. We’ve seen this week patients treated in the trauma bays with ankle sprains. We use what we can and have available to us to treat and get patients in appropriately as needed or get patients on their way. We will practice immediate bedding up until the point the ED is saturated. At that point we will “push to the front”, meaning we will start what services we can ahead of a room/resource becoming available and as they do become available at saturation will place patients based on acuity as the priority. Communication with patients, as it always has been, will be critical to managing expectations and ensuring that we provide excellent customer service.
It will take a few weeks to develop the consistency we are looking for as all the new processes and changes that Level 5 is bringing to the table gets hardwired, but we will get there.
We are working very diligently to expand the hours of the urgent care center so that for those non-emergent patients they have the most appropriate resource available to them. As the hours expand beyond their current offering, you will be the first to know.
If you have any questions, please ask. Thank you for your time and consideration.
Keep the Spirit,
Marc