The Medical City in Ortigas has opened a redesigned pediatric emergency care unit aimed at speeding up diagnosis and significantly reducing patient stay times.

The tertiary hospital formally launched the facility on Monday, 7 September, during a ribbon-cutting ceremony led by The Medical City President and Group CEO Dr. Stuart A. Bennett and Executive Vice President and CEO Dr. Ruben G. Kasala.

Pasig City Mayor Vico Sotto also attended the event.

“I think you can see we are really trying to invest,” Bennett said.

He said the new facility reflects TMC’s effort to improve its emergency department in terms of speed, efficiency and value for money.

“We are using PhilHealth benefits for everybody that have PhilHealth benefits,” Bennett added.

Sotto welcomed the opening of the unit, saying The Medical City would play an important role in Pasig’s efforts to strengthen its health care provider network.

“So we are very happy to see this development,” Sotto said.

“One of the things that we are really trying to improve now is our healthcare provider network and the Medical City is going to be a big part of that,” he added.

“So let’s continue to work together,” the mayor said.

Kasala said the pediatric unit incorporates TMC’s Quick Emergency Room Response, or “FastER,” concept.

One of the major changes, he said, is having doctors conduct triage.

“So what we did is that, most and foremost, not just adjusting our space to make sure that the flow of patients is efficient, we already made a big change where the person doing the triage is a doctor,” Kasala said.

“Not all emergency rooms in the Philippines are doing that,” he added.

Kasala said doctor-led triage allows patients to be assessed more quickly and directed to the appropriate treatment, room or discharge.

“With our highly trained emergency medicine physicians, we are assured that the patients stay short in emergency rooms, they are transferred to whatever room is needed, or they are discharged when they are not needed to be admitted,” he said.

Since the facility began operating in June, Kasala said pediatric emergency room stays have fallen to less than three hours.

“We have improved so much because in the past few years we were having at least eight hours, 10 hours waiting time in the emergency room,” he said.

Dr. Lourdes Jimenez, director of TMC Ortigas’ Emergency Department, said the pediatric emergency care unit has 10 beds and is integrated with the main emergency room and the hospital’s soon-to-open trauma unit.

The facility also features dedicated care zones, improved patient flow, separate respiratory and non-respiratory areas, a child-centered emergency environment and a child protection unit for suspected child abuse cases.

Jimenez said government hospitals are required to maintain child protection units, while TMC is the first private hospital to establish one.