The Emergency Department
Emergency Medicine is a full and independent clinical department within the hospital. It operates its own budget and has parity with other hospital departments. The Emergency Department treats approximately 50,000 patients each year. Residents gain a rich experience in personally and primarily managing patients with challenging and diverse disease processes, including blunt and penetrating trauma. The patient population is primarily indigent, but the ED also receives referrals from clinics and hospitals all over the county.
In addition, the department holds the contracts for medical evaluation of inmates from the nearby juvenile hall and state and local prisons. In 1995, construction was completed on a new state-of- the-art Emergency Department, providing capacity for up to 80,000 patient visits, with special areas for patients needing psychiatric evaluation, decontamination from hazardous substances, and examination and counseling resulting from sexual assault.
The ED contains 36 beds consisting of 6 trauma and medical resuscitation bays, 9 monitored beds, 4 respiratory isolation and gynecologic rooms, 1 pediatric/multi-use room, a psychiatric
evaluation area, 2 padded psychiatric observation room, 1 sexual assault evaluation room, 1 eye room, 2 passcode-locked prisoner examination rooms, and an adjacent 9-bed urgent care center. A spiral CT scanner, dedicated X-ray suite, and diagnostic coronary angiography lab are all physically located within the department. CT scan, X-ray and ultrasound services are available 24-hours a day. The department operates as a paramedic base station and receives traffic from all over Kern County, by ground transport, Medi-Vac air ambulance, and of-course, the infamous homie-ambulance system.