A Prescription for Growth
health care, hospitals, onslow memorial hospital,
It’s just what the doctor ordered - a new emergency department that allows Onslow Memorial Hospital in Jacksonville to treat 50,000 patients a year.
A $40 million Emergency Services and Surgical Pavilion opened in September 2008, on the Onslow Memorial campus, complete with 41 private rooms and four high-tech operating suites. Overall, the new ER is triple the size of the hospital’s previous emergency department.
“This is our most significant construction project since 1975,” says Tim Strickland, spokesperson for Onslow Memorial Hospital. “Both the ER and operating rooms provide us with a major increase in technology, thereby giving us increased ability to supply greater patient care.”
The $40 million construction project, which involved no taxpayer dollars, features an array of modern medical equipment and contemporary architectural design. The wide hallways and spacious operating rooms are painted in calm colors such as beige and soft white, and all 41 ER treatment bays were built to enhance patient privacy.
“Our waiting room is also much larger and, because a more efficient process is now in place, people are spending less time waiting to be seen by the medical staff,” Strickland says. “This whole endeavor is a win-win situation for our patients and us.”
The new operating rooms were designed to keep cords and other objects off the floors, and booms hold lights and other equipment that are strategically suspended from the ceiling.
“All of the surgical lamps in the four rooms give off bright light but no heat, and each room has screens mounted on the walls to allow physicians to see magnetic imagings of the patient,” he says. “This video-guided surgery allows physicians to perform operations with a greater degree of accuracy, and patients wind up with smaller incisions and quicker recovery times.”
Strickland points out that Onslow Memorial Hospital will never turn away a patient, but people with less serious ailments such as a low-grade fevers, sprained ankles or common colds might be better off visiting an urgent care center or a family physician rather than the hospital emergency room.
“Our ER is geared to treat true medical emergencies, including people in intense pain, possible bone fractures, possible heart attacks or trauma cases such as vehicle accidents,” he explains. “Patients in ER first go through a triage process that helps us determine who needs to be given the highest priority. Our ER doesn’t run on a first-come, first-served basis – patients with the more dire symptoms are going to be seen first. That’s just the way it is and always should be.”
Story by Kevin Litwin
