Efforts to Accept Patients with Abdominal Emergencies at a Middle-Sized Community Hospital

Abstract

Although there is concern regarding the breakdown of community healthcare, we believe that emergency patients must be treated safely and promptly at a high medical level. Before our efforts were implemented, emergency patients were examined in our crowded general outpatient setting. Lack of cooperation among doctors or between doctors and other healthcare professionals sometimes resulted in our inability to provide smooth, prompt diagnosis and treatment. Moreover, we sometimes refused to accept emergency patients because of the unavailability of doctors due to surgery, examinations, or lack of appropriate expertise, and our emergency care was unsatisfactory. Therefore, we established a gastrointestinal surgeon-oriented practice by separating general and emergency outpatient departments. More specifically, outpatients were diagnosed and treated at the affiliated clinic and emergency patients at the emergency outpatient department of our hospital, regardless of consultation hours. Our efforts for approximately 10 years has allowed the construction of team-based medicine because of the close cooperation between doctors and other healthcare professionals and a barrier-free relationship among doctors, especially for the treatment of patients with abdominal emergencies. We can now provide prompt, smooth, safe, and high-quality emergency care.