The F. Eugene Dixon Jr. Emergency Center at Maine Coast Memorial Hospital (MCMH) is a model of efficiency, a mixture of modern technology, with Downeast sensibility thrown in for good measure.
The $10-million, 27,274-square-foot addition opened last spring to much anticipation as the Ellsworth hospital was dealing with a growing demand for services. Named for the hospital founder and benefactor, the new emergency center is capable of handling up to 24,000 patients each year. That’s twice what the previous emergency department built nearly two decades ago could handle.
“We tried to design it in such a way to give us some room to grow if demand continues to increase,” says hospital CEO Charles Therrien.
In developing the new building, the architects, hospital officials, and community members sought to bring essential services, which were spread throughout the community, under one roof, without cramming everything together.
For example, the bulk of traditional X-rays are done in the emergency department of most hospitals, so that’s where the designers put it. Previously patients were taken a significant distance to a separate radiology area, says Dr. Kenneth Christian, who has been at MCMH for more than two decades.
Likewise, CT scan equipment that provides a window into the human body has become such a vital part of emergency medicine that MCMH’s equipment was moved much closer to the Dixon Emergency Center.
Patient rooms have become one-third larger making them more flexible and technologically advanced to benefit both patient and healthcare provider.
All of these changes mean a more streamlined process in a field where minutes and even seconds can make a significant difference.
Hospitals across the nation are seeing some dynamic changes, both in terms of who they are treating and how. Heightened concerns about infectious respiratory diseases have prompted hospitals to reexamine methods for preventing the spread of infections such as SARS and tuberculosis. Two of the 15 new emergency center rooms at the Dixon Emergency Center are negative pressure rooms. When secured, the potentially contaminated air is prevented from flowing to the rest of the center and is instead filtered and pumped outside.
Dr. Christian believes that any hospital adding onto its facilities will include similar rooms.
Recent studies here in Maine and across the country show that as many as one in 10 ER visits is for mental health issues—and that the number is increasing. One room in the Dixon Emergency Center is specifically designed for people at risk of harming themselves or others, limiting their access to potentially harmful equipment in the room.
When hospitals look to expand their space, many tend to build in fits and starts, often remodeling existing emergency room facilities, Christian says. MCMH, however, built this facility from scratch on vacant property it already owned, combined with additional land it purchased.
Central to the design of the building is what is called the racetrack, the oval hallway that loops through the middle of the center. At either end of the track are high-tech nurses’ stations, called pods, giving on-duty personnel a wide-angle view of the rooms.
“The racetrack design was really good for us and good for the patients because the nurses can have easy access to [patients] and can see into their rooms,” says Jane Sanderson, the hospital’s manager of marketing and public relations.
Inside the pods, a large monitor called the tracker board provides information about the patients, such as abnormal vital signs and the timetable for lab work and medications. Smaller tracker boards located throughout the emergency center make it easier for the healthcare providers to access information about their patients and to communicate with each other.
In a nod to efficiency and to minimizing disruptions to the patients, medical personnel use special scarab beetle-like transmitters that report their location to a small monitor at the nurses’ stations, curbing the need for noisy overhead paging systems. Small signs on the outside of the rooms illuminate when a healthcare provider is in the room with a patient, providing visual confirmation that the patient is being attended to.
Another efficiency improvement is the pneumatic tube system that speedily transfers specimens needing analysis to the lab, easily outpacing even the fastest of healthcare providers.
But it’s not just high tech that makes this emergency center hum. Equally important are some low-tech, and even what may be described as some no-tech, features.
Rooms once dedicated for specific needs, such as obstetrics or orthopedic injuries, have become larger and more universal. Now, carts containing the necessary equipment like dressings and bandages are wheeled in where necessary, making it possible to treat just about any patient anywhere.
The emergency center uses motorized winches to lift all or part of a patient up off a bed or move him or her to and from a wheelchair or stretcher. What previously could take a small group of people is now done with minimal effort.
“I have lifted a lot of patients and I think that this is a godsend,” says Ruth Hellum, who has been a nurse for 17 years.
Jamie Perry, the Dixon Emergency Center’s nurse manager, says the winches are part of a larger effort to increase patient and staff safety.
“The hospital is really taking a huge stance right now on using patient safety equipment,” she says. “We seem to be one of the leaders in the area in using this patient-safe-handling equipment.”
Outside the hospital, a short distance from the Dixon Center’s entrance is a helipad, allowing for LifeFlight helicopters to land and pick up or drop off patients in critical condition. Previously, the helicopters and ambulances would have met at the local high school’s ball fields more than a mile from the hospital, a trip that would add another 10 to 15 minutes.
Throughout the project’s development, which was kick-started by a $1 million pledge by F. Eugene Dixon Jr. in 2004, Christian was a public face and advocate for the project. Even today, an excitement about the building continues to percolate under his placid disposition.
“It has been so gratifying that what was built includes what we wanted,” he says. “I have to admit that I lived on pins and needles, saying ‘I hope our idea works out.’”
