by Bryan Gibel
Daily Lobo
The Barbara and Bill Richardson Pavilion opened its doors to patients on June 9.
The facility represents a new era in medical care at UNM Hospital, spokesman Sam Giammo said.
"We have high technology that we could not put into the old facility," Giammo said. "We have state-of-the-art imaging that we didn't have at the old facility."
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The hospital staff moved about 220 patients into the wing over the weekend, Giammo said.
The facility was supposed to open last weekend, but its emergency doors were malfunctioning.
Giammo said hospital staff prepared to transfer patients to the facility for months, and it carried out the relocation without complications.
"The move went very smoothly," he said. "It went according to plan. The staff knew what to do."
The $233.8 million, 476,555 square-foot building includes a children's hospital, an intensive care unit and an emergency room.
It also has New Mexico's first pediatric emergency center and almost $20 million in new equipment.
Judith Brillman, a doctor with the emergency medicine department, said the old emergency room was overcrowded.
"In the old ER, patients were stacked up like sardines - it was like third-world medicine," she said.
Brillman said the emergency center is a big improvement from the older facilities.
"The new ER will help make our patients' experiences infinitely better and will make the quality of care much better, too," she said. "It's much more comfortable for the patients and more hygienic. We have more infection control capabilities, special air filtering systems and more rooms for consulting with families."
The emergency room triples the amount of floor space and doubles the number of beds, Giammo said.
The beds in the wing have private rooms, so patients won't have to sleep on beds in the hallways, he said.
"The new facility won't eliminate wait times, but it will help alleviate overcrowding of the emergency department," he said. "We will be able to handle patients in a much more organized and efficient way."
Giammo said UNM Hospital has the only level one trauma center in New Mexico - meaning it is equipped to deal with the most severe trauma cases.
Many of the critically ill patients in the state are brought there for treatment, but the old trauma center had only two beds, he said.
Giammo said the pavilion, with seven beds and three times the floor space, will handle trauma patients more effectively.
"This allows us to handle something like a bus accident," he said. "Now, we can handle multiple trauma patients at once, which we couldn't have done effectively before."
The hospital wing also has a pediatric emergency room for children and their families.
Robert Sapien, chief of UNM's division of pediatric medicine, said the hospital has been waiting for a pediatric emergency room for 13 years.
It will greatly improve the quality of health care UNM offers to children and their families, Sapien said.
"The rooms in the new facility are triple the size of the old rooms, which allows families to be with their child," he said. "They allow us to give really good care to both the families and the children."
