Our Solution

The solution - a new Emergency Department designed with private rooms that have doors, where quality of care, better customer service, and faster turnaround times are made possible due to a modern state-of-the-art emergency facility that will meet the area's growing emergency healthcare needs. Acknowledging this important community need, Highlands' Board of Trustees and Administration included in the Medical Center's 2007 Strategic Plan the planning and commitment to secure funding to construct a totally new $6 million twostory, 11,400-square-foot, state-of-the-art Emergency Department that would replace the existing 6,400-squarefoot department. The new Emergency Department is designed to accommodate an annual minimum capacity of 30,000 patients each year. Additionally, the design will create 5,000 square feet of new patient care space on the second floor.

The new department will include:

• A dedicated Triage Room 

• Special bed where EKGs can be done immediately when a patient presents with chest pain

• Two trauma rooms, each equipped to accommodate two beds

• New bedside monitors with 12-lead EKG features

• A negative-pressure room and a decontamination unit that meet Homeland Security guidelines

• A bereavement room with free long-distance telephone service, complimentary beverage service, and comfortable furniture

• Five private Fast-Track rooms

• Thirteen regular ED private rooms with doors

• Televisions in all patient rooms

• A dedicated Obstetrics Room

• A dedicated Orthopaedics Room

• A high-profile entrance

• A new, large, open Waiting Room with space to accommodate 50 people

• New amenities in the waiting area, including comfortable chairs, a plasma screen television, and complimentary beverage service

Hollis Whitehead, RN, CEN, Director of Emergency Services at Highlands, explains the project in detail:

• The new Emergency Department project is intended to provide the highest quality of care with state-of-the-art equipment for our community while providing all the patient amenities that still make us a community hospital.
  
  
• The new department will allow us to improve many of the problem areas commonly associated with Emergency Department visits.  For example, if you have ever been to an Emergency Department as a patient or visitor you know that waiting can increase your anxiety and make a bad day even worse.
  
  
• The ED project will add seven additional rooms and nine additional beds.  The sooner you get to a bed, the sooner a physician sees you!  It expedites the whole process.
  
  
• This project will also allow us to add state-of-the-art equipment needed to treat our patients.  There will be new telemetry monitors with advanced features to help us speed up care and provide additional safety alerts to keep our patients safe.
  
  
• There will also be a nurse call system that puts a registered nurse only a button push away.
  
  
• Everyone likes television.  It has become embedded in our society and we will be adding personal television monitors to all our rooms.  This will help ease the minds of young children who can watch thier favorite show instead of worrying about their next "shot."
  
  
• Privacy - That is a word that we all respect and appreciate.  This project will allow us to offer all private Emergency Department Suites to our patients.  Each room will be enclosed by a wall and a door so you and your Emergency Department physician can discuss your care in complete privacy.
  
  
• Since 9-11-2001, the entire country has become aware of bio-terrorism and biological warfare, and mass casualty events that could bring our communities to their knees.  Our new ED will offer negative-pressure rooms so we can safely treat any infectious disease without spreding the disease to our other patients or our community.
  
  
• We will be able to handle patients who may become contaminated through railway spills or coal mine spills.  We can do this because we will have state-of-the-art decontamination equipment and staff trained to use it.
  
  
• We will be able to serve as our community's disaster hospital if such tragic events were to take place.
  
  
• We are trying to make the Emergency Department experience as comfortabe for our patients and their families as possible and we are also adding the most technologically advanced healthcare equipment so our patients receive sound clinical diagnosis.