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The state-of the-art facility, covering more than an acre, doubles the size of the current emergency department, which opened in 1994.

By Katie Riley, AHSC Office of Public Affairs
June 15, 2009

University Medical Center will open a new and much larger emergency department and trauma center beginning at 4 a.m. Tuesday, June 16, following three years of construction.

The state-of the-art facility, covering more than an acre, doubles the size of the current emergency department, which opened in 1994.

UMC cares for approximately 55,000 emergency patients and 5,000 trauma patients each year. It is the only Level 1 trauma center in southern Arizona and the state's busiest trauma center.

"It's a tremendous asset for all of southern Arizona," said Michelle Ziemba, UMC director for trauma and emergency services. "We have emergency and trauma teams here that are second to none. Finally we have a facility that matches their excellence."

People seeking walk-in emergency care at UMC will now use a new entrance off of Warren Avenue. There are separate entrances, waiting rooms and treatment areas for adult and pediatric patients.

The new ED will have 61 beds, up from the current 46, and its own laboratory, radiology section and CT scanner. It adjoins the new trauma center and a 16-bed outpatient observation unit for emergency patients that opened in 2007.

"This is the third ED for University Medical Center," said longtime UMC emergency physician Dr, Harvey Meislin, head of The University of Arizona Department of Emergency Medicine. "The first ED was about 7,000 square feet, the second about 20,000 and this new ED is 43,000 square feet in size. CT scanners in the ED, multiple ultrasound machines, fiber optic video airway equipment, digital imaging and critical-care monitoring in every room were not even a dream with the first or second ED. They are a reality today. The new adult emergency department, pediatric emergency area and trauma center rival any facility in the United States," Meislin said.

The new trauma center boasts seven resuscitation suites - up from current four - and a new rooftop helipad to accept injured patients from as far away as Yuma, New Mexico and northern Mexico, said Dr. Peter Rhee, medical director of UMC's trauma program and professor of surgery at the UA department of surgery.

The new helipad had just opened when two mass-casualty incidents involving separate van rollovers last week brought more than 24 patients to the trauma center. "We had 11 helicopter landings in 60 minutes," Ziemba said. "Everything went like clockwork."

UMC's trauma program ranks among the top university trauma centers nationwide in survival rates, in lowest cost and in shortest hospital stays. Last month a blue-ribbon committee assembled by Tucson Mayor Bob Walkup to assess the city's needs for trauma services concluded that UMC's enhanced Trauma Center and expanded trauma team should be able to accommodate Tucson's projected growth through at least 2020.

UMC's new ED and trauma center are part of an $184 million expansion, financed by bonds, that began in 2006. They occupy the entire ground floor of a six-story tower still under construction.

The second floor of the new tower, with 44 new medical-surgical and intensive care beds, will open in the fall, followed by the third floor, with another 44 adult beds, said Judy Dye, the UMC administrator overseeing the multi-year construction project.

Diamond Children's Medical Center, on the tower's top three floors, will open in 2010 to serve the state's youngest patients. It will have 116 pediatric beds.

The hospital's current emergency department will be closed for construction beginning June 16. The facility will be renovated to create an entrance and lobby for the new Diamond Children's Medical Center.