News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Cookeville Regional Emergency Room wait times have improved in the last several months, but the issue remains important to CEO Buffy Key.
Key said leaders met Thursday to discuss wait time improvements in the emergency room. Key said she and other physician leaders have been constantly trying to improve the wait times.
“In the month of December, November, and probably even here in January we always have several respiratory patients in those months,” Key said. “And you know we have a higher volume and so we are pretty full up there. People are having to wait but the improvements have been amazing.”
Key said so many people visit the emergency room for issues beyond a true emergency, impacting the wait time number. Key said CRMC has an acuity level system to determine which patients need immediate attention. Key said the system is a scale of one to five with level one being a more serious emergency compared to level five being a less serious.
“That causes a little bit of wait time sometimes,” Key said. “Because if we had a patient that comes in with an acuity level of one which is near death or something like that, sometimes that level five may have to wait a few extra minutes or even a level three. So you can kind of see how we base that on and we base that on the criticality of that patient.”
Key said the addition of a Cookeville Regional Urgent Care has helped reduce the amount of patients visiting the emergency room.
“The urgent care has been a huge success,” Key said. “Several months ago we expanded our hours to 11pm. I believe we are the only urgent care in the area that is open till 11pm. I was actually there, I took a family member the day after Thanksgiving this year and I think by 10am they had already seen 70-something people. So I think that is helping considerably as well.”
Key said if a patient believes they are in an emergency then CRMC will take it as an emergency as well. Key said she encourages patients who are waiting to be considerate as another patient may be in a more critical situation.
