A common complaint regarding community hospitals across the
country is that their emergency rooms are inadequate.
A common complaint regarding community hospitals across the country is that their emergency rooms are inadequate.
Ask someone you know in the community and you are likely to hear a story about how they or someone they know was forced to sit in the hall of the local emergency room for hours before being brought somewhere for examination.
Workers and administrators at Hazel Hawkins Memorial Hospital have heard this, many times, and have chosen not to deflect such sentiments as the “kind of complaints you hear at every community hospital.” Hazel Hawkins instead took a gamble that paid off, and is working toward providing the community emergency services, and overall expanded facilities and services, that will place it in the elite of local care.
Hazel Hawkins recently released a Capital Projects Summary that did not pull punches in regards to emergency facilities at the hospital.
“The existing area is seriously inadequate to meet the community’s needs,” it states. “Wait times are significant, space is poorly designed and patient satisfaction is low.”
With the passage of Measure L, the hospital secured funding to bring its emergency services more than up to date. When the facility is completed in 2008 it will have expanded emergency care from the current six-bed, 3,500-square-foot space to 10,000 square feet. It will include the following:
Ten acute, private emergency rooms.
Trauma room.
Isolation room.
Imaging room and equipment.
Separate fast-track urgent care area with four beds.
Two inpatient admission holding beds.
Decontamination room.
New electronic emergency room clinical information system and new furnishings, monitored work station, and equipment to treat 30,000 annual patients (up from 14,000 a year) comfortably and timely.
Additional parking area.
That’s a lot of new stuff. The hospital will also be making improvements regarding everything from obstetrics to inpatient surgery to rehabilitation, and more. Recently a new CT scanner was purchased and placed into operation.
Many small and medium-sized towns and counties in America do not have a local hospital. Many Americans are forced to seek hospital care in cities far from home where they do not feel the comfort of being cared for in their own neighborhood. San Benito County residents can get excellent, personal care minutes from family and friends. That this care is becoming more immediate and accessible at Hazel Hawkins provides reason to be proud.
