University of Alabama Birmingham is one example of a client we served who was experiencing severe emergency department overcrowding at their UAB Medicine Hospital. With the assistance of our mobile units, they were able to provide for a larger number of patients as they worked towards more permanent expansion renovations.
In 2023, UAB reached a crisis point and was experiencing extreme emergency department overcrowding. This sparked a need for change.
Their emergency department was seeing a “20% increase in patients, 25% of whom need to be hospitalized, often for specialized care,” according to WBRC News. Therefore, the University of Alabama System Board voted in favor of installing two temporary mobile facilities. They agreed that these mobile facilities would be a great solution for patients while still meeting necessary government guidelines. They selected Mobile Healthcare Facilities (MHCFAC) to provide these high-quality medical units.
In July 2023, UAB announced on their website that they were starting “temporary and long-term expansions of the UAB Hospital University Emergency Department” to meet increasing demands for medical services. They also announced that their two leased mobile treatment units would be installed in August 2023 and be ready for use by the fall. These mobile units were installed to meet capacity needs while the hospital worked on their permanent expansion of the building. This way, patients still received the care they needed and there was a much smoother transition as the hospital expanded.
The mobile facilities added 16 new beds, which UAB described as “essential” to the community as they began their emergency department expansion. This increase in beds made a major positive difference for patient experience.
UAB Emergency Medicine created an Instagram post after one year of operation with the mobile units, reflecting on their success. They shared that they saw 7,100 total patients with an average arrival-to-provider time of under an hour. Additionally, only 1.7% of patients left without being seen, as compared to 3.9% before implementing the mobile units.
“The proof is in the data,” UAB stated in their post’s caption. “The addition of these two units have extended our community impact, increased our capacity to see more patients, at a faster pace, and with the invaluable help of our advance practice providers! We are proud of the hard work each and every member of our emergency department efforts have put in to improve our patient care all around! Always learning, growing, and improving!”
With the use of the two mobile units from MHCFAC, UAB made significant improvements in handling the influx of new patients. This proved to be a great solution for emergency expansion and helped with major overcrowding issues.
