Medical City targets faster pediatric ER care

The Medical City has opened a renovated pediatric emergency unit designed to reduce the time children spend in the emergency room, with doctors targeting admission or discharge within four hours.

The setup places a pediatric consultant at triage, allowing doctors to begin assessment, order tests and start treatment earlier. Point-of-care testing and the emergency department’s proximity to X-ray and CT services are also expected to reduce delays, Emergency Department director Lourdes Jimenez said.

“It’s important that we stick to the four-hour turnaround time. Even if you have a 10-bed capacity, but if you’re more efficient, technically you can cater to more patients,” Jimenez said.

The approach draws on the experience of The Medical City president and Group CEO Dr. Stuart Bennett, who previously worked in one of the United Kingdom’s busiest emergency departments, handling about 400 patients a day.

Bennett said Philippine emergency departments typically have turnaround times of eight to 10 hours, which had become accepted as the norm.

He said the solution was to redesign the process so doctors see patients earlier, immediately order diagnostic tests and begin treatment while results are being processed.

“Ideally you see the patient within five minutes. You send them to go and get blood tests, you send them to get X-rays, you start giving them medication,” Bennett said.

The system has since been adopted across The Medical City network. Bennett said monthly data reviews show 98 percent to 99 percent of patients are processed in less than three hours.

The pediatric unit uses ESI-based triage and separate areas for nonurgent, urgent and emergent cases, recognizing that children can deteriorate rapidly during emergencies.

“Children are not small adults. They really have different physiology,” Bennett said, citing severe asthma as an example in which delayed treatment could lead to intensive care or ventilation.

For parents, Bennett said the message is simple: Seek emergency care when something feels wrong.

“If a parent says their child is sick, you should believe them, right? Because the parent spends 24/7 with that child, they really know when their child is unwell,” he said.