Health Matters: Providence St. Mary Medical Center | 7
Compassionate
Care in a
Challenging
Setting
Understanding the emergency
room process can help ease
concerns and bring comfort.
"What are your hours?"
Edwin Lopez, MD—the medical director of emergency
services and co-director of the Stroke Program at
Providence St. Mary Medical Center—smiles when he
explains that he gets this question about the emergency
room quite often. The answer is: The ER never closes.
And because it's one of the most crucial areas of the
hospital, it's important to know how it works should a
medical emergency arise.
Providence St. Mary 's ER is staffed with board-
certified emergency physicians and advanced providers,
and they treat everyone regardless of financial
circumstances or insurance coverage. An important
distinction between the ER and clinics or urgent care
facilities is that in ERs, patients are not necessarily
seen in the order in which they arrive. Instead, the
hospital staff begins triage, a process that evaluates
a patient for severity of illness and urgency of getting
the required treatment. If a patient receives a lower-
risk assessment, a later patient with a critical condition
could be processed earlier, depending on what the staff
determined during triage.
Michael
Neveux
Photography
