Avera McKennan Celebrates Opening of New Emergency Department

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (Dec. 4, 2007) - Today Avera McKennan Hospital & University Health Center celebrates the opening of its newly constructed, state-of-the-art Emergency Department.

"We have designed our Emergency Department with high-quality care, top efficiency and the latest in technological sophistication in mind, allowing us to handle each and every case with the best that medical care today has to offer," said Fred Slunecka, regional president for Avera McKennan.

Emergency physicians and staff played a key role in designing this new facility, with patient care as a top priority, resulting in unique features not found in other emergency rooms throughout the region.

Sixteen private patient rooms are accessed by a perimeter hallway reserved primarily for the use of patients and their families. Physicians and nurses operate in and out of a central Medical Staff Core. Each patient room has two doors, one from the patient hallway, and one from the Staff Core. This allows patients to experience privacy, away from the busyness of emergency care. Family-friendly features include consultation rooms, a meditation room, and large waiting room - with a special area just for families with children.

Along with the new building design, ED staff operations have been revamped through Avera McKennan's Process Excellence initiative. "Because we know patients want to see a physician as quickly as possible, we've trimmed our door-to-doctor time to an average of 20 minutes. Because we know that patients want to get in, get out and get better, we've taken the measures necessary to reduce our patients' length of stay to an average of only two hours," said Slunecka said.

Rooms are universal in design for the treatment of any illness or injury. Three of the 16 rooms are specially designed for extensive critical care and trauma resuscitation.

"Knowing that there's a 'golden hour' in which life-saving treatment is most effective, our team stands prepared to move quickly from diagnosis to treatment in the case of stroke or heart attack by following proven protocols," Slunecka said.

Phase 2 of this project, planned for this spring, will involve remodeling of former ED space for four additional patient rooms and the addition of an Internet Café.