In response to growing community needs, OSF St. Mary Medical Center has expanded their emergency department to better serve patients across the region. Managing Medical Director Dr. Nathaniel Baker explains these improvements help provide more timely and efficient care:
“Cottage Hospital closed a little over five years now and it is something that we have been struggling to deal with as a community since then. You had a hospital that was built to be one of two hospitals in Galesburg and had to become the sole hospital and adapt and figure out ways to serve the community. Part of that resulted in us having too many patients be admitted that we weren’t able to care for and then too many patients come to the emergency department for the number of rooms we had. We just didn’t have enough physical space to deal with the number of patients we had,” says Dr. Baker.
“It took quite a bit of time, quite a bit planning, a lot of people involved to make this happen and finally we are on the last mile of that project. We are going to have six new exam rooms and one new triage room. Having these extra rooms makes a huge difference in having places to put people,” Dr. Baker adds.
According to Dr. Baker, the expansion cost around $4.5 million.
