Hospital open houses showcase advancements

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Friend Community Healthcare System held a series of open houses for community members and groups to familiarize themselves with the changes to the hospital. Multiple projects have been underway at the hospital including updates to the laboratory, emergency entrance and rooms and nursing station.

The hospital now offers a drive-thru ambulance bay making unloading the patient significantly faster, saving precious time in life-threatening emergencies for patients.

The emergency suite of the hospital now has rooms equipped with Avel eCare, a virtual hospital system that has a 360-degree view of the rooms. The rooms are equipped with microphones and anything spoken aloud is transcribed allowing hospital staff to focus on patient care.

The staff uses this for documenting vitals, medications and seeking second opinions or referrals to specialists.

PA-C Michael Karel demonstrated how Avel eCare can begin the process of initiating patient transfers.

“Prior to this system being in place a patient transfer could take hours,” Karel said. “With support staff seeing and hearing in real time what is happening in the room our patients are receiving better care experience and bedside support.”

Avel eCare also provides the FCHS with 24-hour-a-day access to e-pharmacists, behavioral health assessments, language interpretation specialists and respiratory therapists. The virtual team has a complete itemized list of supplies in the room and can help direct on-call staff in locating supplies.

“All of these little things add up to saving time in critical care moments,” Karel said. “It is the concierge of medicine.”

The ER suite has self-contained air handling and purification systems.

Organizations that were invited to participate included the WMG Tax District, FCHS Governing Board, WMH Foundation, Friend Rescue, City Council, Hospital Auxiliary Thrift Store (HATS), Community Club, Friend Public School and interested parties.