Adult Emergency Room Administration

Stroger Cook County Hospital serves a geographic area with six million residents. The hospital is adjacent to Rush Presbyterian St Luke's Medical Center, Rush University, University of Illinois Medical Center and the Jesse Brown  Veterans Administration Hospital. These institutions form the largest medical complex in the world. 

The Department of Emergency Medicine was established in the Spring of 1987. It is one of the largest and busiest Emergency departments in the United States. The department consists of 27 faculty, 54 EM residents, 8 physician assistants, and over 150 nurses.   It also educates 200 residents from other specialties and 250 medical students per year. The emergency department has 24-hour coverage of Spanish and Polish interpreter services, social services and psychiatry coverage and in-house domestic violence and rape crisis intervention programs, which provide patient advocacy. All Nurses are ACLS certified and the majority are ECRN and CEN. All faculty are either board prepared or board certified in EM and hold faculty appointments at Rush Medical College.
Dr. Jeffrey Schaider is the Chairman of the Emergency Department at Stroger. 

The emergency department has secured electronic tracking boards that follow the patient complaints, vital signs, laboratory and radiograph status on a real time basis.

Laboratory results are directly accessible through the tracking board.  All radiographs are digital and available on computers throughout the department.  The ED has a digital telemetry system to respond to the ambulance radio runs with 4 stations strategically placed throughout the ED. 

The ED is also equipped with real time digital radiography.  There are multiple viewing stations throughout the ED.  In addition to  plain films, CT scans, MRI, and ultrasonography along with reports can be viewed.

Emergency Department care at Stroger Cook County Hospital is divided into separate divisions for adults, major trauma, and pediatric patients. The adult emergency department receives approximately 127,000 visits per year with over 25,000 admissions.

The Adult Emergency Department is divided into the following areas:

-  Green team consisting of an asthma room with 8 chairs, 3 gyne rooms, 1 ENT room, 4 exam rooms, 4 stretcher spaces and a procedure room with a fluoroscopy unit to aid in manipulation of fractures and location of foreign bodies.

  An ultrasound machine is stationed near the gyne rooms for limited OB ultrasounds performed by the emergency medicine staff. 

- Red team consisting of 5 resuscitation rooms, 15 stretcher spaces and 4 isolation rooms

- Blue team consisting of 14 stretcher spaces and 2 patient rooms
 

The department has a 25-bed ED Observation unit, which provides an alternative for patients who require less than 24 hours of inpatient care.  It handles 25% of all ED hospital admissions and is staffed by ED nurses and clinicians. The unit's main objective is to provide an effective and safe alternative to inpatient admission for patients who need short term diagnostic or therapeutic intervention. The most common patient diagnosis includes asthma, pneumonia, cellulitis, diabetes and low risk chest pain. In addition, the Department of Emergency Medicine has developed protocols with the Department of Medicine for the admission of “short stay” medicine admission in the ED OBS unit.
 

The emergency department has a dedicated radiology suite located immediately adjacent to the ED with a high speed helical CT scanner, an ultrasound suite and 3 radiology rooms for plain films.  Finally, the ED has its own laboratory located adjacent to the resuscitation area where ABGs, electrolytes, hemoglobin and renal function testing can be performed in less than 5 minutes.
 

The Administrative Division is responsible for the day to day operations of the department. It also is responsible for Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI). Many projects examine patient care pathways or examine current practice looking for compliance and improvement.

Faculty in Administrative Division:

David Levine, MD, FACEP Director

Trevor Lewis, MD, FACEP, Director of ED Observation Unit

Isam Nasr, MD, FACEP

Helen Straus, MD

Lisa Palivos, MD

Kevin Kern, DO

Jordan Moskoff, MD

last updated 09/21/2007