Good Samaritan Opens New Emergency Department

BY MICHAEL RICONDA

Suffern – Good Samaritan Hospital held a reception on February 13 to celebrate the completion of its newly-built emergency department, which opened on February 14 to supplement the current emergency care unit.

The new unit features an open space with 19 rooms, including 19 patient bays with televisions, new imaging and diagnostic technology, and a new reception area. The unit was specifically designed to afford patients with their own private rooms to accommodate individual needs.

“It’s wide open with good lighting and great color schemes,” Emergency Department Medical Director Adrienne Wasserman said. “It’s a healing environment, and that’s one major difference from the old Emergency Department.”

Rooms were designed based upon professional design and doctor experiences to accommodate individualized patient needs, as well. Specialized rooms exist for OB/GYN, pediatrics, orthopedics, mental health emergencies, isolation for cases of contagious disease, rapid medical examination, and other purposes.

With the new emergency room completed, Wasserman explained that the old emergency department site will undergo renovations to match the new unit, complete with additional patient bays, revamped specialty rooms for critical resuscitation, trauma, and mental health. Upon completion, Good Samaritan will have a total of 32 rooms for the department, with a goal of building up to a total of 50 over the course of the next decade.

“The whole operations and design of this department is for efficiency,” Systems Vice President for Emergency Services of the Bon Secours Charity Health System Linda Dietrich said. “It’s wide open, so it is very efficient.”

Whereas the original ER was designed 25 years ago to serve 19,500 patients, 35,000 patients were served in 2012 and the new area was built in anticipation of an estimated 52,000 patients by 2017. Donations from citizens, the hospital board and staff, funding from hospital system, other private contributions, and aid from county funded the project, which has been in the works for five years.

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