Emergency Department

Mercy Health System plans to start construction next week on a $4 million project to approximately double the size of the Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital emergency department to ease overcrowding. The hospital needs the enhanced facility to handle an increasing number of patients arriving for emergency care, said Mark T. O'Neil Jr., the system's president and chief executive officer. With the additional eight beds called for in the expansion plan, for example, the department would not have had to go on "divert status" yesterday morning, said Beverly Gribben, emergency-department nurse manager.

If you need evidence of how much the western Main Line is growing that doesn't involve housing statistics, just look at its hospitals. Paoli Memorial, Bryn Mawr, Phoenixville and Chester County Hospitals are all on the cusp of major expansions and renovations to improve services, modernize facilities, and, most of all, make room for exponential increases in emergency-department visits and patient admissions. Paoli, for example, is on track to add 126 private patient rooms, expand its emergency department, and add 14 operating rooms.

When Joseph Morelli's medical history popped up on her computer screen early one Sunday this month, Meg Greene, a nurse case manager in Bryn Mawr Hospital's emergency department, immediately recognized that he might benefit from her specialty: palliative care. Greene is part of a small but growing group of medical providers who say many patients in emergency departments are not appropriate for the all-out rescue medicine these units are designed to deliver. Instead, they are suffering from the pain and inexorable decline of cancer and chronic illness or old age, and may be better served by care aimed at comfort, not cure.

An $87 million project to dramatically upgrade clinical and lobby facilities at Lankenau Hospital here is poised to begin moving from drawing board toward reality this year. An estimated $75 million for this construction, initially announced last summer when officials outlined their strategic plan, will come from the nonprofit Lankenau Foundation, which supports hospital programs. The rest is to come from fund-raising and revenues. Officials also want to add a fifth and sixth floor to Lankenau's four-story Pew wing, to house an additional 94 in-patient beds.

For years, hospitals have responded to crowded emergency rooms and longer waits for beds by building ever-bigger buildings and spending vast sums - up to $2 million per bed. But expansion hasn't solved the problem, and the costs are becoming unsustainable. So some hospitals are trying a new tactic: Working more efficiently around the clock. This month, the New Jersey Hospital Association received a $7 million grant, in part to hire a former Soviet industrial engineer whose forte is smoothing out the flow of hospital patients so they can be treated more efficiently.

The Philadelphia VA Medical Center is about to undergo a huge face-lift - and quite a few nips and tucks, too. About 40 renovation and construction projects totaling $40 million are scheduled to unfold at the West Philadelphia center, on University Avenue near Baltimore Avenue, during the next 18 months, said Dale Warman, a spokesman for the Philadelphia VA. Chief among the projects is a $6 million remodel of the center's emergency department, which...

Catholic Health East New Jersey has agreed to build an emergency department at Deborah Heart and Lung Center that the two hospital organizations expect will serve 10,000 to 20,000 patients a year over the next three years. The department, expected to open Jan. 1, 2010, will be operated by Lourdes Medical Center of Burlington County, a Catholic Health East affiliate in Willingboro. Lourdes and Deborah, in Browns Mills, are 21 miles apart. John Ernst, Deborah's president and chief executive officer, said his hospital saw a need for more emergency care in the region, especially as nearby Fort Dix and McGuire Air Force Base have grown.

As the weather turned warmer and then colder again late last month, the emergency department at Chester County Hospital was getting busier. "We are beginning to see a lot of respiratory infections ... the children are brought in over the weekends, the adults come in during the week," said Anne-Marie Guthrie, an emergency department educator at the hospital. The increase in patient volume, said Teresa Rougeaux, hospital spokeswoman, is due to two factors: the growth of Chester County and the increase in the elderly population.

Emergency department staff at West Jersey Hospital-Marlton used to deal with the overflow of emergency patients by leaving them on their gurneys, waiting for care in the emergency department's cramped 17-year-old hallway. "It was not really a good way of dealing with the situation, but there was nothing we could do," said the hospital's executive director, Kevin M. Manley. They dealt with up to 60 patients daily on six beds. Today, after seven months of construction, the emergency department has 14 beds, a waiting room for family members, and a private room for families undergoing trauma.

Officials at Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital, whose expansion plans have raised the ire of neighbors before, said they would seek community reaction to the planned renovation of its emergency department. Hospital officials recently attended a borough council meeting to alert residents to the proposed development and to arrange for a Nov. 21 community meeting to discuss the hospital's plans in depth. The hospital needs to expand the emergency department because it is routinely backlogged with patients, causing excessive admission problems, said Sharon Carney, clinical director of the emergency department.

For years, hospitals have responded to crowded emergency rooms and longer waits for beds by building ever-bigger buildings and spending vast sums - up to $2 million per bed. But expansion hasn't solved the problem, and the costs are becoming unsustainable. So some hospitals are trying a new tactic: Working more efficiently around the clock. This month, the New Jersey Hospital Association received a $7 million grant, in part to hire a former Soviet industrial engineer whose forte is smoothing out the flow of hospital patients so they can be treated more efficiently.

When Joseph Morelli's medical history popped up on her computer screen early one Sunday this month, Meg Greene, a nurse case manager in Bryn Mawr Hospital's emergency department, immediately recognized that he might benefit from her specialty: palliative care. Greene is part of a small but growing group of medical providers who say many patients in emergency departments are not appropriate for the all-out rescue medicine these units are designed to deliver. Instead, they are suffering from the pain and inexorable decline of cancer and chronic illness or old age, and may be better served by care aimed at comfort, not cure.

In the Region Emergency services consolidating Albert Einstein Healthcare Network said Wednesday that it plans to close its emergency department on the campus of Germantown Community Health Services and consolidate emergency services at Albert Einstein Medical Center a mile away. It said it notified the state that the Germantown emergency department, located in what was once Germantown Hospital, will close Dec. 3. Einstein will open 11 new treatment bays in its emergency department that day. Beth Duffy, the health system's vice president for health-care services, said she expected that most of the 30 employees at the Germantown emergency department will be offered other jobs in the system.

AstraZeneca has contributed $1 million toward expansion and renovation at Wilmington Hospital. The renovation of the hospital, which is in the Christiana Care Health System, is expected to create more than 2,000 construction jobs and increase the size of the hospital by 337,000 square feet, to one million square feet. It is expected to be completed in 2012. The project will double the size of the emergency department, provide a new surgical suite, create a new main lobby repositioned on Jefferson Street, and offer a healing garden.

'IJUST HAD a nightmare, please send help. " "My husband won't have sex with me. " "I stubbed my toe on my dresser, and it hurts. " "I have flulike symptoms. " These are just a few examples of recent calls made to 9-1-1 here in Philly. With fear of the H1N1 flu on the minds of many Philadelphians, a reminder needs to be broadcast to city residents regarding the proper use of the 9-1-1 system. According to the Police Radio Advisory Board, about 9,000 9-1-1 calls are placed daily, and it's estimated that 230 of these calls are cranks or hoaxes.

The Philadelphia VA Medical Center is about to undergo a huge face-lift - and quite a few nips and tucks, too. About 40 renovation and construction projects totaling $40 million are scheduled to unfold at the West Philadelphia center, on University Avenue near Baltimore Avenue, during the next 18 months, said Dale Warman, a spokesman for the Philadelphia VA. Chief among the projects is a $6 million remodel of the center's emergency department, which...

Catholic Health East New Jersey has agreed to build an emergency department at Deborah Heart and Lung Center that the two hospital organizations expect will serve 10,000 to 20,000 patients a year over the next three years. The department, expected to open Jan. 1, 2010, will be operated by Lourdes Medical Center of Burlington County, a Catholic Health East affiliate in Willingboro. Lourdes and Deborah, in Browns Mills, are 21 miles apart. John Ernst, Deborah's president and chief executive officer, said his hospital saw a need for more emergency care in the region, especially as nearby Fort Dix and McGuire Air Force Base have grown.

Abington Memorial Hospital said yesterday that it had taken a preliminary step toward acquiring Central Montgomery Medical Center in Lansdale. The hospital said it had signed an asset-purchase agreement with Universal Health Services Inc., a national chain of acute-care hospitals and other health facilities headquartered in King of Prussia, that sets the stage for CMMC to become a part of the Abington health-care network this fall. Financial terms were not disclosed. "We are pleased to have this opportunity to acquire CMMC so its physicians and caregivers can continue to care for Lansdale and Montgomeryville patients close to home," said Richard L. Jones Jr., Abington's president and chief executive officer.

In a time described as the most significant era of hospital replacement since World War II, Bucks County is booming. There is emergency department construction and renovation. New outpatient facilities are opening. There are expanded clinics, renovated laboratories, and even a new hospital building in the planning stages. It is all part of a national building movement that is expected to rack up spending of $200 billion by 2014, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in Princeton.

The family of a student who died of bacterial meningitis filed a lawsuit yesterday against the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, claiming her death resulted from misdiagnosis and mistreatment. Anne Ryan, a 19-year-old University of Pennsylvania sophomore from Albion, Pa., went to the emergency room on Sept. 6 complaining of fever, headache, neck pain and nausea, according to the family's lawyer, Thomas Kline. Those are classic symptoms of meningitis, a rare infection of fluid in the brain and spinal cord.