CarolinaEast Medical Center is located in New Bern, North Carolina. The medical center is a 350 bed, full service facility housing a complete complement of inpatient and outpatient services. In addition to comfortable medical/surgical areas, the medical center has dedicated units for heart care, intensive care, intermediate care, women's care, pediatric care, orthopedic care, surgical care and cancer care. Free standing surgery and diagnostic imaging centers are the region's premier outpatient services providers.
CarolinaEast Medical Center is the only hospital in North Carolina to retain a five-star rating since the inception of star ratings by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The organization received recognition as a Chest Pain accredited hospital and was ranked as the 4th best hospital in the state by North Carolina Business Magazine.
The Emergency Department at CarolinaEast Medical Center offers care to a wide variety of populations. There are 34 beds including 6 beds designated for Behavioral Health assessment and treatment area and a Continuous Care Area with 12 recliners designed to accommodate vertical patients who do not require a room. At CarolinaEast Emergency Department we strive to do what is right; every encounter, every opportunity, every day with no exceptions.
The Emergency Department embarked on a plan in the spring of 2017 to improve our ability to provide appropriate, compassionate, and timely care for all who present to the Emergency Department. The plan at that time was to optimize patient flow, balance nurse and provider staffing to match patient flow, provide medical screening exams by a licensed provider as soon after arrival as possible, build a collegial professional relationship between providers and nursing and create a hospital-wide performance improvement team to support ED patient care and flow throughout the organization.
The Emergency Department has made great effort at creating a dyad nurse-physician leadership model with the addition of a new Medical Director and Assistant Medical Director. This leadership model has contributed to multiple positive changes in the Emergency Department metrics, demonstrating the commitment to excellent and safe care for all of our customers. The leadership team completes dyad rounding at least weekly; the focus of the rounding is on quality, compassion and safety for our customers. The department has also implemented “two-hour board rounding”. Board rounding includes leadership, providers, staff from the emergency department and ancillary departments. The focus of the rounds is to update leadership in the department of the status of all patients in the department and identify and remove barriers that may be preventing our customers from receiving safe, compassionate and timely care.
The percentage of patients leaving without treatment has decreased from an average of 4.1% in 2016 to 2.3% in 2017 and currently 0.9% for 2018. The median time from patient arrival to being seen by a provider decreased from 42 minutes, to 18 minutes from 2017 to 2018. The time from arrival to departure for patients requiring admission has improved by 23 minutes, and the arrival to departure time for discharged patients has improved by 28 minutes. All of these metrics are at or below the level of national benchmarks.
Collaboration, commitment and hard work by the interdisciplinary team have led to measured success. With the support of a dedicated administrative team and intensive Studer coaching from our coach Beth King, the leaders and staff of the Emergency Department have worked diligently to meet and exceed the expectations of our customers.