When thinking about which hospital should receive approval to develop the 41 beds available in Wake County, you might ask “why WakeMed?” The answer to that question is multifaceted, but we will address three reasons in this blog post.
1. Our hospitals are at or above capacity most days, and we need the 41 beds to ensure beds are available for patients. To help alleviate capacity issues, we recently added 42 new beds to WakeMed Cary Hospital, are developing 60 new beds on WakeMed Raleigh Campus, and are expanding Cary Hospital’s Women’s Pavilion and Birthplace by 10 beds. With the rate the community is growing, the need for more beds will still be there when these expansions are complete.
When a hospital is at or over capacity, patient flow throughout the system is impacted. For example, if you visit the emergency department and need to be admitted to the hospital, you may have to wait for an open bed. In turn, patients waiting to be seen in the emergency department will have to wait longer in triage or the waiting room because the bed they need is filled by a patient waiting for an inpatient bed. Multiply that scenario by hundreds of patients daily and it becomes a difficult situation for all. Adding more beds is the only solution to help solve this problem and reduce emergency department wait times across the system.
2. We set ourselves apart by focusing on outstanding quality and customer service, offering the most advanced technology, and featuring nationally recognized Centers of Excellence. As a result, WakeMed patients have the benefit of access to the highest level of care and expertise in women’s, neonatal, children’s, trauma, cardiac, rehabilitation, orthopaedics and neurosciences services. WakeMed features Wake County’s only:
· State-designated Level I trauma center
· Stand-alone emergency departments (in North Raleigh and Apex – the first in North Carolina)
· Air ambulance program, serving the entire region
· Dedicated Pediatric inpatient unit
· Pediatric Intensive Care Unit
· Award winning pediatric diabetes and asthma programs
· Children’s Emergency Department (first in North Carolina)
· Level IV Intensive Care Nursery
· Mother’s milk bank (one of only eight in the nation)
· Neuro Intensive Care Unit
· Inpatient rehabilitation hospital
3. For nearly 50 years, WakeMed has been a strong community partner. We have never wavered from our mission of providing outstanding and compassionate care to all who seek our services. We also devote time and resources to ensure we are prepared to respond to virtually any emergency or disaster situation in our region. We are the largest private employer in Wake County and continuously invest in our community to expand services for the benefit of all.
We truly believe we have the resources and infrastructure in place to make the best use of these 41 beds and to provide the highest level of care to the patients in this community. If you have any questions about the proposed hospital, we welcome comments and questions.
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2 comments:
From your description, it sounds like northern Wake county needs a general community hospital, rather than one just for women, to address all those patients who are causing the overflow. I don't understand how all those patients waiting for beds, or having to be transported from the North Healthplex ER, will be benefited by a hospital that just caters to women of child-bearing years. This community needs, and would strongly support, general in-patient beds. Certainly, Wake Med would want to service all patients in the community, not just a minority of us. Perhaps a compromise is to use the beds for both maternity, as well as general medical care for BOTH men and women. We need a general community hospital in northern Wake county.
That is a very good point. At present, if anyone has to be admitted from the hospital through the ED, they have to be transported from WakeMed North elsewhere. It would make sense to have a hospital where more than 1/2 of the patients needing to be admitted could be admitted and not transported.
However, with all the new beds you are still putting into place at your other hospitals, you still need to add another 41 beds to the system?
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