Description
The Ambulatory Care Department provides a scope of services from diagnostic to assessment to treatment, procedures and observation, and occupies half of the third floor space in the hospital's new addition. Ambulatory care is designed to provide quality patient care efficiently and cost-effectively with a walk-in, walk-out, same-day approach.
Clinics include: Fracture – which alone accounts for 25,000 visits each year; ear nose and throat; breast; dental, general medicine, general and paediatric surgery, gerontology, hematology, infectious disease, ophthalmology, pain management, plastics, pre-surgery, rheumatology, vasectomy, vascular surgery, and urology.
Scope of Services includes: diagnostic, assessment, treatment interventions, procedures, observation / recovery.
Members of the ambulatory medical care team are: anesthetists, family medicine, gerontologists, hematologist, infectious disease, internal medicine, rheumatologists, and surgeons.
Multidisciplinary Team includes: nursing, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, fracture tech, pharmacists.
Approximately 60% of the visits to ambulatory care are associated with two of the clinics – fracture and plastics – more than 75% of these are generated through the emergency department
Volumes through the ambulatory care department have changed dramatically over the past 20 years; visits have increased from under 20,000 in 1987 to an expected 60,000 in 2007. The July 2005 relocation and expansion of ambulatory care space was urgently needed to accommodate this increased outpatient activity.
New building design considerations for ambulatory care included: patient focused, infection control, visual & acoustical confidentiality / privacy, barrier-free accessibility, efficient work flow, flexibility / multi-purpose use of space, standardized room configurations.
The new space has also allowed the introduction of additional clinics that were previously unavailable: dental, hematology, infectious diseases, pain management, and geriatric clinic. In the future, we will attempt to accommodate expanded paediatric medicine and general internal medicine clinics.
