The UAB Hospital now has a new front door, assuring a commitment to world-class care for patients across Alabama and throughout the world, with the new UAB Hospital facility which opened in November 2004. The 885,000-foot, 11-story hospital includes 37 operating suites, 2 procedure rooms, 3 medical surgical units, 4 intensive care units — trauma and burn intensive care, surgical intensive care, neuroscience intensive care, and cardiovascular intensive care, and a 38,000 square foot emergency department.

The new Emergency Department of the University Hospital is located on the ground floor of the North Pavilion. Access to the Department is through the ambulance ramp, an ambulatory patient entrance, and a large heliport atop the building. This new, state-of-the-art facility serves a volume of more than 58,000 adult visits per year, encompassing a wide variety of critical, as-well-as non-critical medical and surgical illness. The Emergency Department staff of 75 nursing and support personnel is headed by a nurse manager reporting directly to Hospital Administration—thereby facilitating the rapid acquisition of supplies and equipment.

The ED information system is provided by Cerner FirstNet, one of the most complete integrated ED solutions available on the market today. FirstNet automates a wide range of functions performed in the ED including registration, triage, tracking, orders, documentation, and medical records.

A sample screen of FirstNet in action

The current facility consists of 45 treatment rooms arranged in a configuration of five separate yet integrated patient care areas, each with its own nursing station and support personnel. There are 32 medical/surgical beds, nine urgent care area beds, and a large, ultramodern trauma/burn resuscitation unit equipped with three large trauma-procedure rooms. The trauma unit is equipped with OR-style lighting, and, as with the rest of the ED, digital radiography is present throughout. Two high-speed, multi-detector CT scanners are located within the ED itself. The ED is also equipped with a stat lab, minimizing laboratory turn-around times.

The Department is staffed by two faculty emergency physicians 20 hours per day leaving only 4 hours overnight with single faculty physician coverage. The University of Alabama Hospital is the only American College of Surgeons-designated adult Level 1 Trauma Center in the state of Alabama, and is a regional referral center for head and spinal cord trauma, burns, stroke, cardiac, neonatal, and psychiatric disorders.