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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

St. Bernardine 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 St. Bernardine Medical Center a 2006 Distinguished ED Service Award for superior medical care. Out of over 50 EDs eligible for this award, St. Bernardine 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 Brian Bearie, MD, the ED team has been able to sustain an amazing level of performance. In 2006, the number of patients treated increased, yet the ED team was able to maintain lower patient wait times, higher patient satisfaction, and fewer ambulance diversions due to overcrowding. In addition, the number of patients leaving before being seen dramatically decreased. With an average patient wait time of 32 minutes in 2006, St. Bernardine’s ED was able to see over 42,000 patients and at the same time patient ratings of ED service averaged over 4 on a 1-5 scale. “I have been fortunate to work with such a high caliber team of emergency care providers,” commented Dr. Bearie, ED Medical Director, “The whole team is dedicated to making every patient’s experience satisfying by providing prompt, professional, and friendly care.”

St. Bernardine’s ED performance is thanks in large part to the implementation of CEP America’s Rapid Medical Evaluation Program© (RME), a customizable patient processing program that is improving ED efficiency at wide variety of sites. In fact, the RME© program at St. Bernardine has been so efficient, that it has been a teaching example for many other EDs interested in improving their own performance. Prior to implementing their RME© program, average patient wait times were over 60 minutes, since then, St. Bernardine’s ED has been able to maintain dramatically lower patient wait times.

Since 1931, St. Bernardine Medical Center has provided the community with excellent patient care. This highly-regarded 463-bed nonprofit, general acute care hospital offers a full continuum of services, from delivering babies to organ transplantation. St. Bernardine is part of the Catholic Healthcare West hospital system.

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CEPAmerica 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.