Baystate Health Foundation Awarded $26,000 Grant

PALMER — The Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts awarded Baystate Health Foundation a $26,000 Capital Grant to purchase two patient monitors for the recently opened Baystate Wing Hospital Emergency Department in Palmer.

The Phillips IntelliVue MX450 portable patient monitors will allow team members to quickly check vital signs on one screen, including blood pressure, oxygen levels, and heart rate. That data then moves with patients to their next phase of treatment, if required. 

“These new cardiac monitors will allow us to take care of critically ill patients while offering us greater flexibility in patient care and decreasing wait times in our Emergency Department,” said Dr. Robert Spence, chief of Emergency Medicine who oversees emergency care at Baystate Mary Lane Outpatient Center and Baystate Wing Hospital.

Currently, the emergency department has 13 patient monitors for its 20 treatment bays. The Baystate Health Foundation will continue to raise funds for the additional monitors, which will provide more usable bays and create improved lengths of stay for patients.

“The additional monitors further enable us to care for any patient in any room, improving our patient experience,” said Kim Davis, MSN, RN, CCRN, CEN, nurse manager for Emergency Services at Baystate Mary Lane and Baystate Wing Hospital.  

Baystate Wing Hospital’s new Emergency Department opened in September 2018. The new $17.2 million facility is three times the size of the old emergency department and can accommodate more than 24,000 visits annually.