Responding to high acuity patients.

Ensuring your entrance is effective.

Imagine trying to take a loved one to the emergency department and having to blow your horn through a tangle of valet parking! The existing ED entrance was inside the hospital’s front door, and one of the first design challenges our team addressed was providing a dedicated walk-in emergency entrance. Additionally, the elevated arrival deck for ambulance traffic was expanded in response to increasing traffic and the size and weight of transport vehicles.

Emory’s patient population is older and often presents with higher acuity and admission rates. Together with the facility’s physical layout, these patient demographics caused bottlenecks of patients receiving or awaiting treatment and admission. Primary project objectives included improving care delivery by alleviating severe space constraints and creating capacity for a projected patient increase. While the amount of waiting space was expanded, the overall patient introduction process changed to incorporate immediate triage assessment and a more ordered CIA. Portions of the ED were renovated in place, remaining operational during construction, while others were renovated for lab functions.