Coliseum Medical Centers expands its ER to serve 12,000 more patients a year

After more than seven months of remodeling, the emergency department at Coliseum Medical Centers is ready to serve more patients.

The hospital announced Wednesday the completion of a large-scale renovation and expansion of its emergency room.

The $7 million restoration project began in December 2017 to improve care at the emergency department. A large portion of the money went toward a new helipad in the parking lot for air ambulances carrying patients.

The hospital also widened its ambulance canopy, installed a new CT scan imaging system and added five more beds to the emergency room, which Daugherty said will allow the hospital to serve about 12,000 additional patients a year.

“This allows us to provide more services to our community,” Stephen J. Daugherty, CEO of Coliseum Medical Centers, told The Telegraph. “It provides a better environment for EMS partners and a better care environment for our patients and staff.”

At 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, dozens of emergency room staff crowded the sidewalk as a helicopter landed on the new helipad, which will be used to transport patients in need of medical care to and from Coliseum Medical Centers.

“The helipad allows us to receive people from outside of Macon that need care urgently, like strokes and heart attacks,” Daugherty said. “And it will also allow us to take people that need services that can’t be provided in here.”

Daugherty said the ER expansion is part of an overall period of growth for Coliseum Health System. Last summer, Coliseum Medical Centers launched a graduate medical education training program in partnership with the Hospital Corporation of America’s South Atlantic Division and Mercer University’s School of Medicine.

In its first year, the program accepted 10 internal medicine and four psychiatry residents, and 27 more residents joined the program this month. As Georgia faces a physician shortage statewide, the hospital hopes to grow the program in years to come, with plans to offer 107 residency positions in multiple specialties by 2020, said Robin Parker, vice president of marketing for Coliseum Health System.

“Certainly one of the biggest challenges in Georgia is the availability of physicians in the community,” Daugherty said. “We’re one of the most underserved states, and our contribution to that is our graduate medical education program.”

On July 1, the emergency room at Coliseum Northside Hospital opened up six more beds as part of an expansion project that also began in December 2017.

Daugherty said the additional beds will allow Coliseum Northside Hospital to serve 10,000 more visitors annually, which means that, between Coliseum Medical Centers and Coliseum Northside Hospital combined, the emergency departments will be able to care for over 20,000 additional patients each year. They currently serve 60,000 and 40,000, respectively.

The emergency department at the Medical Center, Navicent Health, Macon’s other major hospital, served 75,161 patients in fiscal 2017.

“Both of our emergency departments have seen double-digit growth over about the last three or four years,” Daugherty said. “So the timing just worked that we expanded both emergency departments at the same time. ”

Samantha Max is a Report for America corps member and reports for The Telegraph with support from the News/CoLab at Arizona State University. Follow her on Facebook at facebook.com/samantha.max.9 and on Twitter @samanthaellimax. Learn more about Report for America at www.reportforamerica.org.