New ER entrance opens Tuesday

By Gillian Slade on January 5, 2019.

gslade@medicinehatnews.com @MHNGillianSlade

A new entrance to the emergency department will be ready to use Tuesday morning revealing renovations that include 26 treatment beds in private rooms.

Starting at 7 a.m. Tuesday anyone needing the ER should go directly to the new entrance located near the entrance that leads to the atrium at Medicine Hat Regional Hospital.

Those needing emergency services will find that curtains around treatment beds are a thing of the past. Patients will now be treated in 26 private rooms with another 12 to come within a year when phase three of the refurbishment is complete, said ER manager Ryan Klick.

Already the floor space has expanded from 687 square metres to 1,300, and when phase three is complete there will be 2000 square metres in the department. There will also be additional staff in the department, said Klick.

There are now three separate waiting areas in ER catering to the different needs of patients. At the entrance there are also two bays for triaging incoming patients.

From Tuesday the public and ambulances will be using the new entrance and the old entrance will be blocked off, said Klick. Part of the renovations in phase three will include renovations to that old entrance. Eventually only ambulances will use that entrance again.

Phase three will also include creating a three-bed trauma bay, a decontamination room and two isolation rooms, said Klick.

“This is the bells and whistles of the department, the stuff we didn’t have before,” said Klick.

On Tuesday, any patients that arrived at the old emergency department before 7 a.m. will be moved to the new area during the day, said Klick.

The expansion and renovations to the ER were always part of the plan when the new wing at the hospital was constructed.

In order to accomplish the expansion it was necessary to have office space in that area vacated first. Some of this was only possible as the new wing was opened.

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