New Rio Rancho hospital will feature innovative emergency room

From the Rio Rancho Observer - BY GLEN ROSALES - When officials designed the new emergency room at Presbyterian Rust Medical Center, they turned to an auto manufacturer for some efficiency ideas. Several years ago, Toyota developed a track system to increase its manufacturing flow and eliminate waste. Hospital officials applied those tenets to the new emergency room at the facility on south Unser, which came on line this morning, just as the old emergency services room on NM 528 closed.The result for the new emergency room is a tri-track system that should improve patient flow, hospital officials said. Last year, the old emergency room saw more than 22,000 patients, according to Presbyterian spokeswoman Niki Craig. Projections for this year are for that to increase by about 10 percent, she said. Of those, only about 11 percent needed to be admitted to a hospital. So the new procedures should help reduce patients' waiting time significantly, said Maryanne Morelos, emergency room nurse manager. Within minutes of arriving at the emergency room, a patient should be seen for triage, she said. "We want to cut triage time to less than five minutes," Morelos said. The initial triage will determine whether to send a patient onto the acute track for serious issues, the lean-care track for less-serious patients that still need to be seen by a provider and a track in which a patient can be discharged to an urgent care center, or after scheduling an appointment, to see a provider later. "The goal is for patients to be seen by a provider within 30 minutes," Morelos said. "That's not always going to happen, but that's the goal." It also means that patients with serious issues will get seen quicker, she said. Read more

New Rio Rancho hospital will feature innovative emergency room