Oceanside CA— The David C. Copley Foundation has awarded Tri-City Hospital Foundation with a two-to-one matching gift of up to $1.2M that will become the cornerstone of a redesign of Tri-City Medical Center’s emergency department (ED), a major resource for emergency and critical care for the North County coastal community.
Kim Koch, Chief Operating Officer of the David C. Copley Foundation (previously the Helen K. and James S. Copley Foundation) stated, “The Foundation appreciates the value and importance of reliable medical care, looks for organizations that can make life better for the people they serve and feels Tri-City Hospital falls within this category. Tri-City Hospital is the people’s hospital and the services it provides to North County San Diego are vital. Tri-City’s Emergency Department needs a facility update and the Foundation wants to help them make this happen. It is the Copley Foundation’s hope that a matching grant challenge will inspire others to contribute so that Tri-City can move forward with these state-of-the-art changes to its Emergency Department.”
Jennifer Paroly, President, Tri-City Hospital Foundation, stated, “We are excited to partner with the David C. Copley Foundation and are honored by their trust in us and their commitment to our community hospital.”
Once funded, this project will completely renovate the medical center’s emergency room entrance, patient and family waiting area, lighting, triage area, and Station A, one of three major treatment areas in the ED. This redesign will improve upon Tri-City Medical Center’s already excellent outcomes by streamlining the triage process to decrease wait times and improve the patient experience.
Steve Dietlin, President & CEO, Tri-City Medical Center added, “The emergency room is very much the front door to our hospital. This thoughtful and generous gift and this emergency department redesign project reflect our ongoing commitment to providing the highest quality of care and improving the experience for our patients and their families.”
Tri-City Medical Center, which celebrates its 60th anniversary in 2021, is home to acclaimed emergency room based programs in heart attack and stroke care, recently receiving five gold and gold plus awards in these areas from the American Heart Association as part of their Get With the Guidelines program.
In addition to being an ST Elevation Myocardial Infarction (STEMI) receiving center, a designation showing their capabilities in treating deadly heart attacks, the medical center is also a stroke receiving center. Tri-City earned Thrombectomy-Capable Stroke Center (TSC) certification from The Joint Commission, in collaboration with the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association (AHA/ASA), making it the first hospital in North County and only the 36th hospital nationwide to earn the certification. Tri-City Medical Center earned the TSC certification by meeting rigorous standards for performing mechanical endovascular thrombectomy (EVT), a specialized surgical procedure that saves lives by removing blood clots from the brain during an ischemic stroke.
A long-time leader in the treatment of strokes, Tri-City Medical Center was one of the sites chosen for the landmark National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke rtPA Acute Stroke Trial, which established current rtPA stroke care best practices, introducing clot-busting medication for treating stroke patients.
Tri-City Medical Center treats thousands of chest pain patients and hundreds of stroke patients annually and its interventional radiology team was noted by the New England Journal of Medicine in 2018 for achieving treatment rates that were among the top three best in the country.
In addition to its outstanding reputation in cardiovascular and stroke care, the ED pioneered Code Caleb, a unique partnership between the emergency department and Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) to treat critically-ill babies at the earliest stage of life. Tri-City Medical Center also has longstanding relationships with local fire departments and emergency medical services agencies to expedite care, leading to fast and life-saving treatment.
Construction is slated to begin on the emergency department redesign in 2021.
For more information about the emergency department redesign and ways to give, please visit https://tricityhospitalfoundation.org/what_you_can_do/redesign-tcmc-emergency-department.html.