Emergency Care

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Learn about the highly skilled Emergency Medicine physicians on the ECHN medical staff.

ECHN's emergency services are here when you need them, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We offer full-service emergency departments at Manchester Memorial Hospital and Rockville General Hospital. These EDs are staffed with highly skilled physicians, nurses, and other emergency personnel who are trained in basic and advanced life support.

We combine state-of-the-art medical care with a personal touch that you often find in a community hospital setting. ECHN also plays an active role in the management and governance of three local ambulance companies, which further expands our continuity of care and level of services.

Read an article on our emergency care services.

Our State-of-the-Art Emergency Departments

Privacy and comfort. Safety and security. Efficiency and service. These are the goals that led to the renovations of the Emergency Departments at Manchester Memorial Hospital and Rockville General Hospital.

The renovations combine state-of-the-art medical technology with a consideration for the personal needs of the individual, and enhance the overall emergency services available to residents in the region.

Why There Is Sometimes a Wait?

The philosophy of emergency services is not first come, first served, but rather is based on the severity of a person's condition. Someone suffering from a heart attack or stroke, for example, must be seen before a patient with a severe earache. The length of time that patients sometimes spend waiting before being seen is perhaps the most common complaint about any hospital emergency department.

At MMH and RGH, the staff is always mindful of each patient's convenience and does everything possible to reduce the wait. But sometimes delivering quality care to a seriously ill or injured person takes time. Of course, more physicians and nurses could be added to an emergency department's staff in order to speed service, but this would raise the cost of health care for the consumer. And because no one can ever predict when an emergency department will be busy in a given week, it is impossible to arrange extra staffing only during "busy times," although additional doctors often are on call to come in if needed.

Treating people on the basis of the severity of their illness or injury is known as triage. A triage nurse is always on duty at the hospitals' emergency departments, and the departments' receptionists also have been oriented to triage. If there are no urgent cases, then the process in the emergency departments is the same as anywhere - first come, first served.

For a patient who has been waiting to see a doctor to have stitches for a lacerated finger, it can be frustrating to see a person treated immediately who drove himself to the hospital and walked in under his own power, without an obvious problem. But what may not be obvious is that the person's reason for coming to the Emergency Department was chest pain, which is considered a high-risk situation by the emergency staff.

Please be assured that we will do all we can to ensure that you receive the best of care in the most efficient way possible.