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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Arrowhead Regional Medical Center Wins Distinguished Emergency Department Service Award

Contact: Sarah Hay
800.476.1504
hays@cep.com

(May 2007, Emeryville, California) CEP America, the nation’s largest emergency physician partnership, has awarded the emergency department (ED) at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center a 2006 Distinguished ED Service Award for superior medical care. Out of over 50 EDs eligible for this award, Arrowhead was chosen for consistently delivering high quality, timely care to patients while simultaneously maintaining a satisfying practice location for ED staff.

Under the leadership of ED Medical Director Rod Borger, MD, and Kelly Bernatene, RN, the ED team has been able to sustain an amazing level of performance. Arrowhead, a public, 373-bed hospital, has one of the busiest EDs in California, with almost 100,000 ED patients treated every year. That is more than any other ED in San Bernardino, Riverside, San Diego, and Orange counties. Yet the wait times for Arrowhead patients were significantly lower than wait times at most EDs with half as many patient visits. At the same time, patient satisfaction was high and very few patients left without treatment. Dr. Borger, ED Medical Director, commented, “I am amazed by the level of performance possible when the whole team is focused on providing the best and fastest care. I am extremely proud of our ED team and would like to thank each provider who helped make Arrowhead’s ED a great place to receive and provide emergency care in 2006.”

These accomplishments were due in large part to the implementation of the Rapid Medical Evaluation Program© (RME), a process developed by CEP America to drastically reduce wait times and improve patient flow. The patient throughput at this high patient volume ED has become so efficient, that they are setting a new standard for public hospital ED performance, which is even superior to many other non-public hospitals with similar volumes. The RME© program has been implemented by CEP America in over 40 other public and private hospitals in multiple states with similar success. Additionally, the California Association of Public Hospitals awarded Arrowhead with a Management Excellence Award Honorable Mention in 2005 for their initial identification of throughput issues and another in 2006 for their implementation of the RME© program.

Arrowhead is a state of the art, facility, serving the County of San Bernardino in Southern California. It is the first facility in San Bernardino County to be verified as a Level II trauma center, a distinction that coincided with the hospital's receipt of an HHS medal of honor recognizing its 75% transplant donor rate, which far exceeds the national average of 46%. The ED sees over 96,000 patients per year of which a large number are trauma cases. Arrowhead is a public hospital and regional burn center and has an active teaching program.

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CEP America is the national partnership practice model of California Emergency Physicians (CEP) Medical Group. CEP was founded in 1975 and is a premier provider of physician staffing, management, and consulting services for over 60 Emergency Department and Ambulatory Care Practices in Arizona, California, Georgia, and Oregon, caring for over 2,500,000 patients annually. For more information on CEP America, visit their website at www.cep.com.