By L. Alexis Young
Inland Valley Daily Bulletin
Copyright 2007 MediaNews Group, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
MONTCLAIR, Calif — With $10 million in planned upgrades and improvements, Montclair Hospital Medical Center is on its way toward decreasing emergency room wait times and increasing services to patients.
The hospital, formerly called Doctors Hospital Medical Center of Montclair, was purchased by Prime Healthcare Services Inc. in July 2006. The new ownership brought about new patient beds, hospital equipment, and a remodeled emergency room.
Hospital administrators say the hospital now has the lowest emergency wait time among area hospitals.
“Last year the turnaround time was over three hours and we’ve reduced it to under two hours,” said Gregory Brentano, administrator and CFO. “The average wait time to see a physician is now less than 25 minutes.”
In addition to more beds in the emergency room, the hospital added new monitors and gurneys.
“We’re going to more than double the size of the emergency room,” Brentano said. “We’re going to expand from eight beds to 15 beds in the emergency room, and it’s going to be a much more efficient operation.”
One of the most crucial changes is the reduction in the amount of time the emergency room is closed to ambulances. Brentano said saturation hours - or the number of hours that the hospital closes its doors to patients brought in by ambulances - have dramatically decreased to only 26 hours in the first six months of this year, down from 1,017 hours in the first six months of last year.
The hospital has already spent $4 million to purchase new equipment including a nuclear medicine camera, a digital X-ray machine, and a filmless radiology computer system. A new automated medicine and supply machine that works something like a vending machine has cut out the need for a medical supply room. The former storage area will be removed allowing for expansion of the emergency room.
The birthing center has also seen some improvements. The hospital has purchased a new fetal monitoring system that allows doctors to monitor patients from their office, new birthing beds for moms, and new chairs that pull out into beds so dads can stay overnight. New flooring and mosaics were also added.
Linda Ruggio, chief nursing officer, said the new equipment is also affecting the nursing staff and enabling the nurses to better care for patients.
“It makes their jobs tremendously easier,” Ruggio said about the new heart monitoring machines. “All of the new equipment is geared to improve patient care and to improve the nurses’ ability to render safe patient care. The public today is pretty savvy about healthcare and they get on the Internet and shop around for healthcare. It keeps us accountable and it allows us to see how we rate with other hospitals.”
Ruggio said with so few hospitals in the area, it was crucial for Montclair Hospital Medical Center to make improvements not just in the emergency room, but to the entire center.
“We’ve put together a program that everyone is on board with from the administration to the medical director to the nurses,” Ruggio said.