Treatment Goals

What we tell our patients: while in the observation unit, the team will focus on the most pressing issue that led to your presentation to the Emergency Department. This may require additional diagnostic testing, medications, and physician consults as the time determines the next steps in your plan of care. Occasionally you may have secondary medical issues you'd like to discuss. If it's possible we will attempt to address those concerns wile you are here. Often times, however, you will need to follow up with your primary care physician to help you with those concerns. If you do not have a primary care provider, we can provide you with referral information.

Behind the scenes: most of our patients in the observation unit have diagnoses of syncope, TIA, and chest pain. These three types of patients have diagnostic tests that can determine if they need to be admitted or discharged within 24 hours. Our unit is like every other unit, just quicker. We have physical therapy, occupational therapy, neurological hospitalists consults, MRI, CT, nuclear medicine heart stress tests, and many other diagnostic tests. We don't wait around for these tests to be done, a lot of the time we are paging the people that need do the tests in order to get them done quicker. We have to be proactive on getting our patients admitted or discharged.