Running a hospital is always a case of extreme multitasking. You have to simultaneously provide top flight medical care 24/7, meet ever-increasing patient demands, work to recruit and retain professional staff, follow intricate regulatory and legal requirements, keep up with a knowledge and technology base that changes faster than practically any other business, plus deal with the pressures of competition, cost containment, and third party oversight of everything you do.
The Emergency Department (ED) puts an exclamation point on those challenges. Unpredictable, intense, sometimes chaotic, EDs are unique workplaces. It requires careful planning for an ED to operate at the highest level. When it was time to expand and improve the ED at Silver Cross Hospital, a 300-bed acute care facility in Joliet, IL, an hour south of Chicago, the administration turned to a team of healthcare experts, including Silver Cross staff, independent architects and designers, and Nurture by Steelcase, to develop a premier ED.
