ER redesign can help attract patients

Steward Health Care, a Boston non-profit hospital chain, has redesigned its emergency departments to improve care and respond to increasing competition from other hospitals and urgent care centers, according to an article on the Fierce Healthcare website.

Steward has redesigned five emergency departments in the Boston area to attract more patients to its community hospitals and has a sixth renovation underway.

The larger, quieter EDs offer more private rooms.

Hospitals focus on the ED because they are typically the first experience a patient has with the facility, Jay Kaplan, M.D., president-elect of the American College of Emergency Physicians, said in the article.

Read the article.