St. Joseph's Healthcare System

The goal for the geriatric emergency department is to improve healthcare and emergency healthcare for functional and emergent seniors. This is for all of our aging parents, grandparents, and even for ourselves when we finally hit that age of 65 when we'll be eligible to come into the geriatric emergency department.

There are several parts to a geriatric emergency department and one of those is education. Both our nursing staff and our medical staff have been trained on how to manage geriatric illnesses. It also has to do with quality initiatives. We have a call back program, we call it the 2 step emergency department. Not only are patients seen in the emergency department which is step 1 but they're actually re-evaluated the next day at home which is step 2. We have found that the 2 step process actually decreases functional decline in functionally independent seniors.

When you have a staff that is very attuned to geriatric needs and they know about continuity of care and medication interactions its just an added resource to help you be a better physician  and take care of patients, not only taking care of them in the emergency department but also upon discharge making sure they're all set up for follow-up care and social services. There's so much work that has gone into the physical plan. The point here is to make it much less noisy. These ceiling tiles are 4 inches thick and they have insulation above them. These lights change color to appear soothing as a patient when you're in here we can change the lights any way you want. We have incandescent lights, dimmable flourescent lights, these mattresses are dense foam mattresses and that way its more comfortable if you have to stay here for an extended period of time. The flooring is non-glare non-slip and we're going to encourage our patients while they're here if they're waiting for tests to walk up and down this hallway. Part of our healing is we have a medical harpist for people who are very anxious, if we can make them more calm we can better manage their anxiety, their blood pressure, their delirium, and we can use less medications and give better healthcare.

This coming year we'll see 28,000 seniors that will come through our geriatric emergency department. This absolutely is the way to the future, having an emergency department with staff and follow-ups you're helping to plan accordingly and also prevent a lot of repeat visits to the emergency department. Geriatrics particularly will feel very welcomed and gratified by all the special treatment they are going to receive.

Because of the flexibility of this administrative staff, the Sisters willing to try something new we were able to put together a program that never existed anywhere in the country that now will become the standard for geriatric emergency care.