By Staff
June 29th, 2016
BURLINGTON, ON
The Joseph Brant Hospital Emergency Department, the biggest department in the hospital, will open in the fall of 2017.
Trish Hamilton, the Operational Readiness Coordinator, sets out five things you need to know about the new ED
1. Patients will receive care faster in the new ED with the help of a new Paired Triage Registration Model. Currently, a patient moves from triage to registration when arriving at the ED. In the new ED, triage and registration will be combined at one station so that a patient is medically assessed and registered at one time.
2. There will be 35 private exam rooms. Each room has a bright, modern space with essential services within easy reach including technology in the head wall above the bed for medical gases; electronic charting stations inside the rooms; and supply alcoves directly outside the rooms that will store linens and cleaning supplies.
3. There will be three private trauma resuscitation rooms and an isolation trauma room featuring glass doors that have the ability to switch from transparent for patient monitoring, to opaque for instant privacy.
4. There will be a dedicated Psychiatry Emergency Services zone with security, three observation rooms, an exam room and a quiet room for families. This area will enhance privacy and dignity for patients who are experiencing a crisis.
5. The Emergency Department will be easily accessible and easy to find, located on the main level beside our new main entrance on Lakeshore Road.
Staff at the hospital currently work in an environment where an old tired building begins to make room for a shiny new structure that will have all the improvements technology has to offer.
Hopefully you won’t have to make a trip to the emergency department – but if you do – it will be a lot different than anything you have experienced in the past.
Let’s hope that the new ER facilities will improve patient access to critical care. However, my family’s very poor recent experiences with the the Jo Brant ER was less a result of old facilities than it was exposure to limited and ineffective staff resources – at all levels. Will the new ER improve the many existing personnel and process issues?
The latest data available (2014/15, Canadian Institute for Health Information) illustrates just how poorly the Joseph Brant ER serves our community. Amongst the key performance indicators for ER Access, the Jo Brant is in the 90th percentile – amongst the worst if not the worst for a large community hospital both in Ontario and across Canada. The JO Brant ER wait time for physician initial assessment was 4.1 hours compared to a 3.2 hour average in Ontario and 3.1 hour average across all provinces. For total time spent in the ER by admitted patients, the JO Brant had a horrific 56.5 hours compared to a 29.9 hour average for all Ontario hospitals and a 30.5 hour Canadian average. This dismal performance is based on 45,710 Emergency Department visits for the 2014/15 reporting period.
Unless significant and fundamental process, staff and facilities improvements are made to the new ER facilities, it is unlikely that future outcomes will improve greatly. Time and a great deal of money will tell.
Burlington, Best Mid-Sized City in Canada. Just don’t have an emergency!
My question is exactly the same 35 private exam rooms – but how many physicians at one time dealing with emergencies. We went to the new Oakville Trafalgar Hospital and had the same experience as Mr. Bean….lovely hospital, many exam rooms but only 1 doctor on the service.
The question is Will there be enough staff this time? No point building if they aren’t increasing enough staff.
How will this new ER be any better than the new OTMH ER? Took my 84 year old mother to OTMH. Waited 6 1/2 hours before being seen by a doctor. He ordered a chest X-Ray and found she had a partially collapsed lung. Stayed in ER for almost 3 days before being moved to a room. She had been in the hospital almost a month now. Again, exactly how will Burlington’s newest ER be better than the Oakville hospital that just opened in December 2015?