Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas Announces $53 Million Emergency Department Expansion
Contact: Maria Carpenter, 214-820-4827Email: mariaca@baylorhealth.edu
(DALLAS-TX, July 16, 2006)-Baylor University Medical Center (BUMC) has launched a $53 million emergency room and trauma center expansion that will increase the emergency department to 78,000 square feet from 20,681 square feet and more than double the ER's capacity to treat patients requiring urgent and trauma care. Construction began in July and is expected to be completed in January 2008.
"The Baylor Emergency Department is expanding to meet the area's increasing need for life-saving emergency services and trauma care," says John McWhorter, president of BUMC. "The expansion project will more than triple the size of our emergency department, add more diagnostic equipment and an electronic medical records system. Overall, we expect to improve efficiency and alleviate the current overcrowding of our Emergency Department."
BUMC is one of only three Level I trauma centers in the 21-county North Texas trauma network. The other two centers are at Parkland Memorial Hospital and Children's Medical Center.
"We expect to treat some 73,000 emergency patients this year, or about 200 patients each day," says Dighton Packard, M.D., chief of Emergency Medicine at BUMC. "Currently, our ED handles approximately 40 percent of the area's serious trauma cases and operates at full capacity 78 percent of the time - well above the industry recommendation to operate at capacity no more than 10 percent of the time."
The ED expansion will allow BUMC to treat 102,200 emergency patients annually - or 280 patients a day. The number represents a 40 percent increase in patient caseload. Other expansion benefits include:
- High tech equipment including electronic medical records, four X-ray units and two CT scanners;
- 86 private patient spaces including four major trauma care beds;
- Four extra ambulance bays;
- Disaster preparedness components, including decontamination rooms, a containment room and showers for biological threats;
- More physicians and nursing staff.
One-third of individuals in the United States visit an emergency department each year. Approximately 75 percent are for non-life threatening illnesses or injuries and 25 percent require life-saving care. One of every three individuals in the United States will require trauma care in his/her lifetime. Annually, nearly 60,000 Texans experience trauma and almost 10,000 die from the injuries.