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By Leah Sander
InkFreeNews

ROCHESTER — Woodlawn Hospital has moved its triage center area and changed its emergency room provider group to better serve its patients.

The Fulton County Chamber of Commerce had a ribbon cutting for the new triage room Thursday, May 23, at the hospital at 1400 E. Ninth St., Rochester.

Woodlawn Chief Nursing Officer and Vice President of Patient Care Services Paula McKinney noted the previous center was in the back of the hospital away from the entrance.

She said it enabled patients to be “seen immediately by a clinician.”

“The last thing is to announce that we have nurse-driven protocols that help us enact care more quickly, so that your ER wait times are less,” added McKinney.

She explained before “there wasn’t anybody out front that could see people come in and lay eyes on them.”

“So moving it here to the front, now there’s a nurse 24 hours a day that’s sees people immediately for bleeding, chest pain, those kinds of things,” said McKinney. “The other thing is in that little room they can implement nurse-triggered protocols, which are order sets that they don’t have to ask the doctor’s permission to use.”

“If you come in with a fractured arm, we can pull that arm fracture protocol. You come in with chest pain, we can pull that protocol,” she continued. “The nurse can go ahead and implement getting X-rays, labs, things like that done before you even see the doctor, so it speeds up the services and care, so then after all those results are back, the doctor can see them and then come in and talk to you about what might need done.”

Woodlawn contracts with its emergency room doctors, with Concord Medical Group starting as its new provider on May 1.

“They’re helping us to improve our patient experience, provide better care,” said McKinney. “We listened to the community that had a lot of concerns about our ER, so we’ve changed our provider group to bring in doctors that are board-certified ER physicians and move quickly.”

She praised the “great staff here and (thanked) the community for letting us know their concerns.”

“I think we’ve got a great team, so we’re here to take care of people,” said McKinney.

Emergency Department Director Troy Phillipy thanked the hospital’s administration, board and staff for the changes, mentioning the adjustments would “make the (patient) experience what it should be and what it will always will be from now on.”