MultiCare spent $20M to expand emergency departments in Tacoma. Here’s the result
Emergency departments get a bad rap for long wait times, and staff at MultiCare are aware of it.
“Studies show nothing really good happens in a waiting room,” said Neal Greacen, emergency department director with MultiCare. “We want to try to eliminate that as much as possible.”
Part of the wait is due to a high volume of patients, according to Sharon Oxendale, president and COO of both Tacoma General and Allenmore hospitals. It’s a statistic that’s been gradually increasing year after year at both hospitals in Tacoma.
“With that population growth comes demand for all kinds of health care services. We want to be ready and take care of our population, and we know that this area is growing crazy,” Oxendale said.
Population growth was the root cause of a $20 million project by MultiCare to expand and upgrade its emergency departments. Allenmore Hospital’s new emergency department opened in December, with Tacoma General’s beginning operations last September.
Allenmore now can accommodate 10,000 more patients each year after a $15 million, 14,600-square-foot expansion that includes a new feature, Safe Treatment Rooms, meant for individuals who may be suicidal or attempting to harm themselves. The project increases the total number of overall treatment rooms from 17 to 36.
At Tacoma General, MultiCare implemented a “Fast Track” feature for patients not experiencing life-threatening injuries and increased treatment spaces from 51 to 66. At “Fast Track,” patients who come to the emergency department for “cuts or coughs” but typically can remain upright are taken aside to a separate room with the intention of getting then in and out quickly.
“For the guy who’s got that cut and realizes he’s going to wait a long time, we also have systems in place and room to accommodate them as well. We can accommodate whether you’re really ill or whether you’ve just got something needs to be addressed, like a cough (or) cold,” Greacen said.
Between the two hospitals, there are about 60 specialty physicians.
So far, staff say the project’s been paying off.
For one, arrival to treatment time has improved dramatically, said Greacen, who’s worked in more than 118 emergency departments in his 35-year career. On average for MultiCare hospitals, it takes about six minutes to get into a room.
“I know for the first part of this year, we have improved by almost 15 to 20 minutes,” Greacen said.
At Allenmore, the time between arrival to seeing a physician is about 17 minutes, according to most recent data. At Tacoma General, where there’s higher volumes of patients, that time is about 25 minutes. Prior to the project, arrival to physician time could take more than 30 minutes.
“We’ve improved that significantly — almost 40 percent (at Allenmore),” Greacen said.
Together, the hospitals had more than 88,000 emergency department visits in 2019. After completion of the project, Oxendale estimates they can now handle up to 120,000 visits.
“That’s going to hold us, I’m going to say, for eight to 10 years,” Oxendale said. “... I think we’re feeling good for now.”
At the same time, MultiCare is constantly tracking population trends and hospital capacity, Oxendale said.
“We want to (ask), ‘What’s next?’ ... We do anticipate, probably in 2021, to be adding some more capacity,” Oxendale said.
This story was originally published February 29, 2020 at 7:00 AM.
