The demand for emergency care has risen 24 percent in five years. The number of patients admitted to the University of Michigan (U-M) ICUs from the emergency department has risen ten percent a year for at the last five years and the time patients have to wait for an ICU bed is growing longer.
The University of Michigan Health System’s adult emergency department treats some of the nation’s most critically ill and injured patients. Once they get stabilized by emergency medicine teams, most head for an operating room or directly to one of U-Ms six specialized adult intensive care units.
To meet the demand to treat emergency cases effectively, $7 million in funding was recently approved by the U-M Board of Regents, to build a new Emergency Critical Care Center or (EC3). The Center will be among the first of its kind when it opens in two phases starting in spring 2015. The project will be established by transforming part of the University Hospital Emergency Department by adding a 7,800 square-feet EC3.
Each of the five resuscitation/trauma rooms in the EC3 will enable teams of doctors, nurses, and other health professionals to rapidly diagnose and stabilize a critically ill or injured patient after they arrive by helicopter or ambulance.
The EC3 will make it easier for teams to test new diagnostics, devices, monitoring equipment, and treatment strategies. The results could benefit patients worldwide who suffer strokes, sepsis, hemorrhages, brain trauma, cardiac arrest, overdoses, and acute lung injuries.
The new facility will also serve as the training ground for a new breed of emergency critical care physicians as there is demand for physicians who have special training in emergency medicine. This rapidly growing discipline involves post-residency training merging the skill sets of critical care with emergency medicine, give doctors the information to focus on the first hours after the onset of a major health emergency.
The two year program will make emergency medicine-trained doctors eligible to be board certified in critical care, a recent change by the American Board of Medical Specialties. UHMS emergency critical care fellowships are available beginning in July.
In addition, U-M already has many emergency research clinical trial efforts underway and serves as the hub for multi-hospital clinical trial networks including the Neurological Emergencies Treatment Trials (NETT) network, Michigan Stroke Net, and the Pediatric Emergency Care Research Network (PECARN).
Go to www.medicine.umich.edu/dept/emergency-medicine or to www.uofmhealth.org for more information.