Gleaming floors, numerous private rooms, and centrally located nurse stations will soon greet patients at Crouse Hospital’s new emergency department. The public got a sneak peek today of the $38 million space before it opens to patients Tuesday morning. Crouse Emergency Department Medical Director Dr. David Mason says their old, cramped facility struggled to meet the increasing demand for emergency services.
“We’ve basically met the need by making more hallway spaces, which are not ideal for patients, their family, not ideal for caregivers, staff because there’s no privacy protected and there’s only so much you can actually do for a patient in the hallway. Lots of things that we do for people need private rooms and then we completely ran out of hallway spaces.”
They’re leaving a space that dates back to 1974 for a brighter, modern facility three times larger with 31 rooms. Mason says while they kept updating technology through the years, the new space will better serve patients.
“We have basically a standardization of the rooms which really will help provide efficient care for our patients and our patients won’t really notice that, but our staff will notice that and that will translate to quicker times through the emergency department.”
Federal data show Crouse already has the shortest emergency wait times in Syracuse, a common complaint for some who’ve reported waiting hours to be seen elsewhere. Mason says the new facility should make them even more efficient.
“There’s nobody who works in the emergency department that wants their patients to wait four hours, and we do the best we can to minimize that wait. Certainly with a bigger space, we’re going to have more rooms now for the standardization and other efficiency gains, we will be able to minimize the weight time. Is it going to be perfect? Some days when we get 10 ambulances at once - we can’t help that, but it’s definitely going to be a lot better.”
This is just phase one of the project; Mason says the old Emergency Department will be renovated to accommodate Crouse’s Prompt Care walk-in clinic across the street.
