Renovations to the emergency department at Bay Pines VA Healthcare include private rooms for patients with a toilet and cable television.
SEMINOLE – A trip to the emergency room at Bay Pines VA Healthcare should be a lot more efficient and beneficial to veterans.
The hospital opened the second and final phase of renovations to its emergency department on Jan. 26.
This phase doubles the size of the facility to 15,000 square feet and expands the number of beds from 10 to 20 – all in private rooms with toilets and cable television. Four of the rooms are safe rooms designated for mental patients.
The first phase opened two years ago. The $5.5 million project triples the size of the former emergency department, which was built in 1983.
“This helps us meet the needs of an aging veteran population,” said Dr. Lithium Lin, chief of medicine service at Bay Pines. “With the expansion, we expect to treat more patients. We see this as a way of bettering healthcare for veterans in Pinellas County.”
Lin said the emergency department currently treats about 20,000 patients a year and about 5,000 are admitted.
“This is quite an improvement over what it was four years ago,” said Wally Hopkins, director of Bay Pines VA Healthcare. “Our emergency department was very small and our patients had no privacy.”
Larry Diehl, chief nurse for primary care, said the expansion gives the emergency department the same quality as some of the better hospitals in the country.
“It’s larger than most in Pinellas County,” he said. “As far as the technology, it’s among the leaders in the county and the nation.”
New amenities include computerized medical records at the physician’s fingertips, a pharmacist dedicated exclusively for emergency patients, computerized medication dispensing, a digital X-ray station, CT scanner and an MRI, all installed to help with faster patient flow through the department.
It also includes a 20-seat waiting room and a separate family room. There also is additional space dedicated strictly for storage.
An electronic bed board at a nurse’s station allows the hospital’s “bed czar” to calculate more accurately the number of beds that will be required for admitted patients.
“The most exciting thing about this is our ability to offer state-of-the-art treatment to our patients,” said Diehl. “I would say we have caught and surpassed most emergency rooms in the region and country.”
Bay Pines treats about 95,000 patients a year and another 1.5 million at its seven outpatient locations in west-central Florida.
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