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Hospital Expands Emergency Room Capabilities
John Muir Concord keeps up with growing number of patients
By Kellie Applen
STAFF WRITER
Contra Costa Times
Patients with cuts, muscle sprains and other ailments are receiving help more quickly at John Muir Medical Center's Concord campus.
The medical center added four treatment spaces this month to its emergency department. It needed the additional beds to keep up with the surge of patients seeking treatment there.
The Concord campus emergency room doctors treat about 44,000 patients annually — more than double the number of patients the medical center anticipated treating when it opened the department in the mid-1970s, said Donna Brackley, senior vice president of patient care services.
The increase may, in part, be attributed to population growth. The growing number of uninsured residents is also a factor, Brackley said.
"It's more difficult for them to find a doctor, so they will seek care through an emergency department," she said. And that care usually meant long waits, while emergency patients received treatment first. To shorten wait times, the hospital designated the four new beds to patients with nonemergency concerns, Brackley said. And one emergency room doctor was assigned to focus on their care.
"It's like running an urgent care unit within the emergency department, Brackley said.
The hospital operates the new beds from noon until 10 p.m. — the emergency room's busiest hours, she said.
The additional beds bring the total number of emergency department treatment spaces to 26, with several more planned.
The medical center plans by the end of 2009 to open a new larger emergency department, with 32 private rooms, on the first floor of a new tower on the Concord campus.
Kellie Applen covers Concord and Clayton. She may be reached at (925) 682-6440 ext. 26, or kapplen@cctimes.com.
[back to top](Posted February 15, 2006)