Post-Implementation Review of the New System at the Hospital Emergency Department and Point at Issue : Including the Impact of COVID-19

<p>TMG Asaka Medical Center was established in 1977 as Asakadai Central General Hospital. Since then, the hospital has played a role in reginal medical care centering on Asaka area in Saitama Prefecture. In January 2018, the hospital was renamed to TMG Asaka Medical Center upon relocating to a new facility. At the same time, its emergency service has shifted from a department-based "carpool" system to ER care system. <br>This review reports the effects and issues of the implemented system as well as the impact of COVID-19 since 2020. The results have shown that by establishing the current ER system, the time between receiving a call from EMS to confirming approval to accept a patient had decreased up until 2019. However, in 2020, the time showed an increase due to the prevalence of COVID-19. <br>Since COVID-19 classified as a designated infectious disease, securing hospital beds for infected patients and strengthening infection control measures which include antigen tests allowed the aforementioned time to reduce back. This was a trend observed not only in the emergency department but also among other departments with different physicians. <br>Meanwhile, the emergency department was able to maintain the response time of 1 to 2 minutes-from ambulance arrival to provision of medical attention-throughout the entire period. On the other hand, the response time of other departments, despite being able to reduce it at first, remained prolonged due to the spread of COVID-19. However, the general average of hospital response time was maintained at a similar level before and after the epidemic. This is presumably due the fact that cases requiring primary care by the emergency department had doubled. <br>The results indicate that the ER system is very effective in smoothly accepting emergency patients amid an epidemic such as COVID-19, and that it is important the system continue to be strengthened.</p>