White Plains Hospital Center this month will mark two openings that will expand and enhance emergency and critical care services for the populous community it serves.
Two and a half years after it began, a $9.5-million renovation project at the hospital”™s busy emergency department is near completion and awaiting final state approval. An open house for the new Flanzer Center for Emergencies and Critical Care is scheduled from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Jan. 27.
Also on Jan. 27, the hospital will add angioplasty services for patients at its Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory, which opened in June 2008. Previously limited to diagnostic services, the cardiac lab recently was approved by the state Department of Health to provide emergency and elective angioplasty to patients to unclog arteries and restore blood flow to the heart. White Plains Hospital Center President and CEO Jon B. Schandler said White Plains is the first community hospital in the area to offer the service.
Patients suffering heart attacks have been transported to Westchester Medical Center and to New York City hospitals for angioplasty treatment. “This (added service) is critically important for us to be able to provide the definitive care for patients,” Schandler said. “When you”™re the busiest ER in the county, not to have that I think provided people a real concern about appropriate care.” He said the lab is expected to do about 500 angioplasties in the first year of service.
The Cardiac Catheterization Lab, one of three such facilities in Westchester, operates under the hospital”™s medical services agreement with the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons and its Center for Interventional Vascular Therapy at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center. The affiliation provides patients at White Plains with access to Columbia’s clinical research programs in cardiology.
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At 23,690 square feet, the new emergency department will be twice the size of the ER it replaces, Schandler said. Designed by Cerniglia Architecture and Planning P.C. of Hopewell Junction, the two-story facility includes an intermediate care center on the upper floor and triage and acute-care units on the ground floor.
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All of its 38 treatment rooms are private and separated by walls rather than curtains. The acute-care unit has separate specialty areas for treatment of stroke and heart attack victims and persons with behavioral emergencies, two trauma and resuscitation rooms, an 11-room pediatric unit and a decontamination area for treatment of biological, chemical and nuclear-related injuries.
Schandler said the hospital will guarantee that ER patients will see a medical professional within 30 minutes after being triaged. To reduce waiting time, each emergency room is equipped with a computer for bedside patient registration, “which we think is critically important,” he said.
“We have the busiest ER in Westchester County,” Schandler said, with about 40 percent more ER visits annually than any other hospital in the county. In 2009, the hospital”™s ER saw about 48,500 patients, a 6 percent increase from 2008, he said.
Schandler said the hospital”™s former emergency department opened in 1996, but was obsolete by 2001 in terms of size. The new ER has been built to handle 60,000 patients a year, he said.
Entirely funded by donors, the construction project was done while the hospital”™s ER continued to operate under less than ideal conditions. For staff, “It”™s like when your kitchen is under construction,” said Kristen Lawton, the department”™s assistant nurse manager.
