A new program at Dauterive Hospital aims to take much of the wait out of the hospital’s waiting room.

The hospital will implement a Qualified Medical Practitioners program starting Tuesday. The goal of the program is to reduce wait time for those seeking emergency treatment and provide faster access for the critically injured or ill.

“The people who are going to benefit the most from this are people with a true emergency,” said Dauterive Hospital Public Relations and Marketing Coordinator Trevis Badeaux.

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“No longer will you be sitting in an emergency room for hours on end... waiting for someone ahead of you in line for your turn.”

As part of the program, a triage nurse will meet patients early in their visit to the emergency department to perform a medical screening exam.

The triage nurse will then set priorities for patient care in the emergency department.

Patients will be grouped into five categories — resuscitation, emergent, urgent, semi-urgent and non-urgent. Semi-urgent and non-urgent cases may wait until all more severe cases receive treatment.

“Dauterive is putting the ‘E’ back in ‘ER,’” Badeaux said. “We’re making sure that people who come to the ER actually have an emergency.”

Qualified medical personnel, including physicians, nurse practitioners and registered nurses trained for labor and delivery, will continue to medically screen semi-urgent and non-urgent cases as they wait.

If they determine a patient’s condition is not urgent, the patient will be given the option to stay in the emergency department for care and treatment, follow up with a family physician or seek medical care and treatment at a community clinic. They must pay hospital and physician fees if they decide to wait.

If a patient is deemed to have a medical emergency or is in labor, they have the right to receive an appropriate medical screening exam, necessary stabilizing treatment or an appropriate transfer to another hospital.

The services are available even if the patient does not have Medicare, Medicaid or medical insurance or cannot afford it.

Chief Nursing Officer Neal Manuel said the program will decrease patient wait time by segregating emergency and non-emergency patients.

“I think it’s going to be a positive thing for our community,” Manuel said. “It’s really an effort to improve the healthcare that we provide.”