Kaweah Delta has selected the members of its first Emergency Department Advisory Council aiming to enhance patient experiences in its Emergency Department, one of the busiest in the state.
The following 14 people were selected to sit on the council, which had its first meeting on Feb. 27: Phil Bourdette, Guy Christian, Susan Delgado, Laurie Diamant, Sean Doyle, Rick Eastes, Kathy Johnston, Ravi Kumar, M.D., Christine Moore, Belva Peden, Monica Peterson, Gailerd Swisegood, Ann Tonini, and Thomas Wright. Members will attend a monthly 90-minute meeting with several Kaweah Delta staff members, and will serve a two-year term.
“Regular feedback from the community is important because it helps us improve,” said Deborah Volosin, Director of Community Engagement at Kaweah Delta. “This new council will create a dialogue and help us gather ideas so that we can continually improve programs and policies to address healthcare challenges and enhance the experience of our Emergency Department patients and visitors.”
Kaweah Delta’s Emergency Department is currently undergoing a multi-phase expansion that is expected to be complete in Summer 2020. It will modernize, expand and improve Kaweah Delta’s ED facilities to better serve patients and meet the needs of the growing community in the following ways:
- Grow the number of patient beds from 41 to 74 beds
- Nearly double the size of the waiting room to accommodate 100+ patients
- Add a new area that will allow patients to be more quickly screened.
Kaweah Delta’s ED was originally built to serve 72,000 patients a year, but today, staff there cares for more than 90,000 patients a year. To help make sure that patients are getting the care they need, there is now a patient navigator in the ED, who makes sure that patients are getting the care they need. In addition to answering questions and helping patients understand the process of care in the ED, the patient navigator, a Licensed Vocational Nurse (LVN) can also monitor patient vital signs. Kaweah Delta has also made changes to ensure that after patients are seen by a registered nurse upon arrival and have vitals taken by an ED technician, they are seen by a doctor within 30 minutes of arrival, so that if any tests are needed, they can be ordered.
As a large regional healthcare organization, it is Kaweah Delta’s mission to serve the broad community. This new council is modeled after a council that Kaweah Delta created in 2017, a Patient and Family Advisory Council. The group of patients and their family members work with healthcare providers to improve patient experiences.