First look at Aria Health's new $37.1M emergency department

While workers buzzed around putting the finishing touches on the new $37.1 million emergency department at Aria Health’s Torresdale campus in Northeast Philadelphia, Dr. Gerald Wydro didn’t try to hide his high expectations for the project.

“This will be a destination ED,” said Wydro, Aria’s new chairman of emergency medicine. “Patients who have to go to an emergency department will want to come here. It’s a gorgeous space.”

Aria’s previous emergency department at Torresdale, equipped to handle about 45,000 patients a year, struggled to keep up with demand.

“The clinical staff was always saying there wasn’t enough room,” Wydro said. “This remedies that.”

Aria will unveil the new ED at a community day event Saturday. It is scheduled to begin providing patient care on Tuesday.

The hospital’s ED will nearly double in size to just under 80,000 square feet. The project will allow Aria to increase the number of treatment rooms to 40 from 30, and increase the ED’s capacity to handle an additional 25,000 patient visits per year.

Among the other features are separate entrances for walk-in patients and for patients arriving by ambulance, its own centralized CT-scanner and X-ray equipment, two trauma bays that are four times larger than the previous ones, a separate area for people awaiting test results and a parking lot with 128 spaces.

The emergency department space on the largely landlocked campus was previously occupied by a parking area and building for support service staff.

Thomas Kurtz, senior director of clinical operations for emergency medicine at Aria, said building a new ED from the ground up allowed the health system to incorporate a host of design features that will improve how quickly patients are evaluated and treated.

“It’s all about managing patient flow in a timely manner,” Kurtz said.

In the new space people walking in will immediately be evaluated by a triage nurse — called a pivot nurse — at the front desk. If a patient is in need of immediate attention, the nurse will be able to coordinate a treatment protocol so medical staff can be heading to a treatment room at the same time the patient is getting there.

The goal is not to have a patient waiting in a triage area or treatment room for 20 minutes before being seen.

Patients will no longer need to be wheeled around the hospital for diagnostic imaging because of the centrally located CT scanner and X ray machines. Kurtz also noted the ED will be divided into separate units for patients based on the seriousness of the condition being treated, with patients who have more minor injuries or illnesses being treated closer to the front door so they can get in and out faster.

While all hospital emergency departments in the Philadelphia area are facing new competition from the rapid proliferation of urgent-care centers and retail health clinics opening in the region, Kurtz said Aria’s Torresdale ED project isn’t a response to those changes in the marketplace.

“It’s less about competition and more about getting people the right care and the right time in the right location,” he said.

Urgent-care centers and health clinics in retail outlets, Kurtz said, are fine for minor pains and strains. Aria itself is a partner in two FastCare centers in supermarkets: one in the Morrell Plaza in Northeast Philadelphia and in Levittown, Bucks County.

The new ED at Torresdale will provide care for people who need immediate attention for heart attacks, strokes, trauma and other serious conditions. The entire Aria system continues to see more emergency patients as medical centers like Parkview, Northeastern, Medical College of Pennsylvania and Graduate hospitals have closed or converted to other uses in recent years.

“And as baby boomers continue to age we definitely needed to have more capacity,” he said.

Kurtz said the health system and staff will have to embrace new methods for improving how it deliveries emergency care.

“If you bring over old processes that really don’t work into a new space,” Kurtz said, “you’re really not accomplishing anything.”

Source: Philadelphia Business Journal