Riverside Regional Medical Center Emergency and Trauma Center
Newport News, Virginia
Faced with significant capacity management challenges, the Riverside Regional Medical Center’s emergency department has
Riverside Regional Medical Center Emergency and Trauma Center
continued to find ways to ensure that patients receive prompt care, exceeding benchmarks in several areas. As the only
comprehensive stroke center in the immediate area, it sees a high volume of stroke patients. Through collaboration with EMS partners and workflow redesign, the team increased the percentage of patients with door-to-needles times of less than 30 minutes from 50 percent to 92 percent. The team’s record low 8-minute door-to-needle time was achieved during a trial of EMS “stroke stickers” that prompt the team to obtain essential information needed to administer thrombolytics. The use of these stickers has now become standard for multiple EMS agencies in the area.
To further address capacity challenges the ED surge plan was completely redesigned and structured around a standard score that’s calculated within the electronic medical records. The team pushes desktop alerts to all facility computers every three hours to ensure all team members have awareness of the ED surge level. A comprehensive job action plan was developed for every area, guiding practice and resource change based on ED surge. This resulted in a 2.35 percent decrease in LWBS from baseline.