One-stop shop for care

ModernHealthcare.com

May 25, 2013

When Dr. Rich Zane arrived last year at the University of Colorado Hospital to become chair of its newly formed emergency medicine department, he found an emergency room built to handle 25,000 patients a year but was seeing 60,000.

Patients faced long wait times, satisfaction plummeted and many simply left without treatment. The ER was constantly on diversion. Like most hospitals, Zane said, it was operating under “a process that's predicated on 1960s medicine and we're practicing it in 2013.

”He set out to transform ER operations. Last month, the 467-bed hospital unveiled a re-envisioned emergency department. It has no wait. There's no such thing as triage, and patients see a doctor as one of their first points of contact.

The Aurora-based hospital is the latest example of medical centers confronting the central paradox of today's emergency-room care: more and more patients—and their primary-care doctors—are taking advantage of the emergency department's ability to offer a 24/7, one-stop shop for all their ailments. And as they do, hospitals are seeing new opportunities to tap into that demand. Read the full article here.