MIAMI (WSVN) - Crews are hard at work making the finishing touches on a highly anticipated adult emergency room for Jackson Memorial Hospital.
When all is said and done, the $400 million expansion project will feature more than 200 patient rooms, doubling the hospital’s current capacity and making it one of the largest emergency departments in the country.
“So this is really a gift to our community,” said Jackson Health System President David Zambrana.
Zambrana offered 7News a sneak peek of what’s to come inside the new facility.
“So today, triage happens in our current emergency department in a pretty open area. Our goal here is that after registration, patients are brought back into one of these, one of six rooms, and evaluated by a physician,” said Zambrana. “If you go to our current area, I think there’s three pods so this doubles the size of what’s available.”
He said the added space and restructured layout will allow for more efficient patient response times.
“This is our digital X-ray room. Notice the proximity to triage,” said Zambrana while walking through the emergency room. “The goal is to keep moving patients forward and not backward, meaning once they register, we’re not gonna send them back. They’ll have triage, and then they’re into the clinical space.”
A typical day will have nearly 300 patients walk through the hospital’s emergency room. The goal of the new emergency room is to make it a one-stop shop for treatment and a seamless flow for vastly improved efficiency.
Doctors will also have quick access to MRI, CT, and X-ray machines.
Zambrana also showed off an improved space to handle patients in need of urgent care.
“It’s set up like an operating room, so anything that a critical patient would need would be done in this space,” said Zambrana.
The hospital worked with nursing students to refine their patient admission process once the new emergency room opens for business.
7News cameras were there last month as students provided feedback in simulated patient experiences to improve their system.
“We care for 57,000 uninsured patients on an annual basis. But we also want this community to see this emergency room, we’re definitely committed to our underserved, but we want every patient, even patients who have a choice as to where they seek healthcare, to look at this organization, certainly this emergency room, as a place they can receive care as well,” said Zambrani.
The first patients will walk through these doors on April 23. That will also mark the end of the first phase of the overall project. The remaining expansion is expected to be completed in the fall of 2027.
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