UMC ED closes for good

There were tears and a few sighs at 6:45 a.m. April 17, as barricades went up and a banner was unfurled announcing University Medical Center’s emergency department was officially closed. In three languages, large banners directed patients to the Community Regional Medical Center two miles away.

ED staff in scrubs dating back to the days when UMC was a county-run hospital and called Valley Medical Center hugged and took photos of the historic change-over.

It was Day 2 of a planned three-day transition of patients and services from UMC to Community Regional, which will now house all the specialists, high-tech equipment and unique services needed to take care of the Valley’s most critical patients.

Teams of nurses, physicians, respiratory therapists and paramedics moved 32 patients Tuesday from intensive care, medical/surgical and intermediate care or step-down units.

The first medical/surgical patient – Juan Marquez, 43, recovering from an auto accident – departed UMC at 9:45 a.m., and the last patient arrived at Community Regional at 4:20 p.m. Hospital staff expects to move 28 to 30 patients on April 18, along with the remaining equipment and staff from UMC.

Marquez looked around gratefully at his new room on the second floor at Community Regional and at his nurse who came along from UMC. “What makes a place is not the walls, but the people,” he said.

That sentiment was echoed again and again at UMC as longtime employees contemplated leaving familiar surroundings.

Shari Warner, registered nurse clinical supervisor of the ED, has been at UMC since 1995. The finality of the closing hit her at 4 a.m. after the Level 1 trauma status officially switched to Community Regional and ambulance traffic began going there. A few minutes later moving crews began taking out gurneys, crash carts, rapid sequence intubation boxes and other high-tech equipment needed for the most critical patients.

“It wasn’t sad until we let go of our Level 1 status. We were going from somebody to nobody,” Warner said. Level 1 is the highest care designation and requires 24-hour staffing in specialties such as neurosurgery, orthopedics, plastic surgery, trauma surgery and gastrointestinal disorders. 

“A lot of people would characterize this as a sad day,” said Berj Apkarian, vice president of medical affairs. “But it’s a historic day.”

Jack Chubb, chief executive officer of the two hospitals, agreed, “The people are so happy when they see what’s available to them and to patients.”

The regional medical center’s 56,000-square-foot emergency department is about the size of a football field and the largest in California. With the traffic and services moving over from UMC, Community Regional expects it to be among the 25 busiest ED’s in the nation.

Also housed on the downtown campus now is the region’s only 24-hour, fully-staffed burn center, the region’s only high-risk pregnancy and delivery center, the Valley’s only teaching hospital-level accreditation for cancer care, full service neuroscience departments and the latest in imaging technology. UC San Francisco’s Fresno Medical Education Program sits next to Community Regional, bringing with it faculty, residents and cutting-edge research.

Jason Ravenscroft, who started nursing at UMC in 1994, said he was mostly excited to be moving downtown to a truly academic regional medical center. “It’s going to be a change that has a lot of potential,” he said. “That ED is huge compared to what we’re used to. It’s big in every capacity with more rooms and with everything under one roof.”

With the excitement and bittersweet reminiscing came a bit of concern. Ravenscroft and Warner worried that even though the closing had been well publicized, people used to coming to UMC might forget.

Sure enough, 10 minutes after hospital emergency room signs along Cedar Avenue had been painted black, a 43-year-old man with stomach pains was dropped off outside UMC’s old ED. He shrugged when asked if he hadn’t seen the closed signs. “I saw people and lights still,” he explained in Spanish.

Garth Wade, nurse manager, just smiled at the extra patient and picked up a cell phone to arrange for an ambulance to take him over to Community Regional once he was examined. “We anticipated this might happen. We’ll take care of him – we’ll take care of him like we always would.”

This story was reported by Erin Kennedy. She can be reached at ekennedy@communitymedical.org.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007