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TGH Shows Off New Emergency Room

MICHAEL SPOONEYBARGER / The Tampa Tribune

The pediatric care center in the Tampa General Emergency Room and Trauma Center has 10 treatment rooms with a dedicated trauma room which will open Thursday.

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By KEITH MORELLI | The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 6, 2007

Photo Gallery Of ER

TAMPA - The halls were empty, the floors sparkled and the smell was that of an as-yet-used emergency room, which is what it was. Tampa General Hospital is getting ready to open its new emergency room and trauma center on Thursday and offered glimpses into its inner workings this morning.

The expansive ER is part of a new six-story building that cost $190 million. The ER is equipped to handle sick and injured children, stroke victims, trauma sufferers and people contaminated from biological, radiological and chemical terrorist attacks.

The new ER will take the place of the old ER in the existing building, Tampa General spokesman John Dunn said. "We're going to use that for something else," he said.

Clearly, the hospital staff was impressed with the new digs.

Deana Nelson, the executive vice president and chief operations officer, called the new facility "a work of art" that was five years in the making and included the assistance of industrial engineers to determine the right number of rooms in the space available.

The 65,000-square-foot ER, which occupies the entire second floor of the building, was a work in progress until now. Rooms and procedures were tweaked the whole time and are equipped to handle "minor and major disasters," she said

There are 66 private treatment rooms and six trauma rooms.

All around the facility, including along the walls of the waiting room, are "head walls," or panels in the wall that have power outlets, suction hoses and oxygen hoses, for those emergencies that happen in inopportune places.

A CT unit and MRI room, digital radiology and ultrasound technology, are on the floor. There is a 24-hour pharmacy, said Amy Paratore, vice president of emergency and trauma operations at the hospital. Currently, emergency room workers have to get X-rays on one floor and take patients to an operating room on another floor.

The trauma center is across from where ambulances pull up and has a quick and easy access to where medical helicopters land and disgorge trauma patients.

Last year, 68,000 people in need visited the Tampa General emergency room on the north end of Davis Islands. That may sound like a lot, and it is, but it only puts the hospital in the top two-thirds of hospitals in the nation.

Roomy waiting areas ring the north side of the building, looking over a waterfront panorama of the Tampa skyline. Flat-screen television sets hang throughout the area.

Part of the emergency room is for pediatrics, and the muted tones are designed to be kid friendly.

"It's a nautical theme," Paratore said. Original works of art hang from the walls, and sea shells are stamped into the floors. There are DVD players in each of the rooms.

The planning for the emergency room began when SARS and the bird flu were making headlines, so a part of the facility has a self-contained "negative pressure" section that keeps rooms and the entire pod isolated in the event of an airborne epidemic, Paratore said.

All that and valet parking makes the new emergency room something to crow about, hospital officials say.

The location may be the only drawback. Being that Tampa is in Florida and Florida occasionally is a target for hurricanes and being that TGH is on the water and subject to storm surge, should there be a concern that injured hurricane victims can't get to the bright and shiny, new emergency room?

Dunn said officials thought about that. He said during a storm, few people would be out heading toward the hospital. And in a storm's aftermath, if the bridges are open, the emergency room would be accessible. Storm surge would not stay long, he said, and the emergency room is on the second floor of the building.

"We may be out of commission for a short time," he said, but operations can resume as soon as the storm surge recedes.

Tampa General is a Level 1 trauma center - one of seven in the state - that serves a 12-county region. It is also the primary teaching hospital for the University of South Florida's College of Medicine.

Reporter Keith Morelli can be reached at (813) 259-7760 or at kmorelli@tampatrib.com.

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