St. Mary debuts bigger, better emergency department
LANGHORNE - The Emergency Department at St. Mary Medical Center was packed on Dec. 5 and everyone seemed happy about it.
The reason was obvious: the crowd had gathered to witness the blessing and unveiling of the first phase of St. Mary’s $22 million expansion and redesign of its emergency department. The three-phase project, which began in 2009, is scheduled to be completed in August.
Each phase has a specific focus. The initial phase dealt with improving treatment for the most seriously ill patients. The second, scheduled for a March debut, will benefit ambulatory patients, while the third will improve the medical center’s existing emergency department.
The project started more than three years ago, when St. Mary formed an 8-person committee who researched the most renowned hospitals in the country. The committee’s focus was narrow, said Marian Moran, Vice President of Support Services and Chief fnformation Officer for St. Mary.
“We looked at services needed by the pediatric community, the adult community, the critically ill,” Moran said. “We focused on the needs of making it seem like a normal hospital room. St. Mary set up the system so everything a patient might need can be brought to them.
The department has a new CAT scan machine, allowing a full-body CAT scan to be performed in less than three minutes. By comparison, wimmer said, a CAT scan of just a patient’s head used to take seven. New stretchers have built-in scales, which, along with the floor-mounted scales, makes weighing a patient convenient, wimmer said. Part of the project included a new ambulance bay that can accommodate 13 emergency vehicles at a time. Special rooms for emergency personnel and patients’ families have been added.
According to wimmer, St. Mary Emergency Department sees an average of 200 patients a day. The average stay is under an hour, wimmer said.
“Everything we did was patient-centered,” Moran said.