Children’s Wisconsin will open an expanded, 50-room emergency department and trauma center in its new Skywalk Building on Thursday, one capable of treating more children, while also optimizing care.
At roughly 50,000 square feet, the new space is about 20,000 square feet larger than the Wauwatosa hospital’s outgoing ER, which at less than 30,000 square feet has just 34 beds. That facility was set up to treat about 35,000 visits a year. But today, the department sees about 75,000 ER visits a year, explained project leader Samantha Green, an executive director in primary care for Children’s Wisconsin.
With 50 beds – 48 treatment rooms and two trauma and resuscitation rooms – ER staff can do more “direct bedding,” Green said, which is when a patient is moved directly to a treatment room after being checked in by a nurse or other staff member.
The move will allow for better comfort for the patients and also minimize the chance that they might come in contact with any potentially infectious patients in the waiting room.
“Nobody really wants to hang out in an ER waiting room,” Green said.
The new ER also has six rooms that have two doors – one that opens off of the waiting room, and the other that can be accessed by nurses and physicians within the interior of the department.
The rooms will allow patients who may not be particularly ill to receive care and be discharged from the same room, so they don’t need to be around any other department activity.
New features
The new treatment rooms each have an iPad that patients can access via a sophisticated mounting arm, which will aid the hospital in collecting sensitive data about social determinants of health, like whether a family is struggling with housing issues or hunger. Green said the iPads are a great tool, as oftentimes patients are more comfortable divulging information to a machine than to a person.
The department’s new trauma and resuscitation rooms are situated side by side, connected by a door, so that families who might have more than one child with traumatic injuries can be present for both children.
“We typically have more resuscitations than traumas. Although we have experienced an increase in traumas over time, particular with gun violence, and other accidents,” Green said. “About 9 to 12% of (ER) patients are admitted to the hospital. And there is a trauma elevator just around the corner that goes straight up to surgery on the third floor.”
With the new building, the hospital also has its own ambulance garage, which can serve four rescue vehicles at a time. More than 90% of patients that come to the Children’s ER come in a personal vehicle, but the hospital does see about 7,000 to 8,000 ambulance arrivals each year.
“We are a level one trauma center, so really, anything that could happen,” Green said.
Multi-phase improvements
The new building which has two stories above grade, as well as a lower level, also features a new pharmacy, that will stay open to 11 p.m. to allow parents and guardians to pick up medications for their young ones even if their local pharmacy is closed for the day.
The completion of the 160,000-square-foot Skywalk Building, which is an addition to the Craig Yabuki Tower, is the final piece of the hospital’s multi-year Milwaukee Campus Improvement Project.
The $385 million project, which kicked off in 2019, included the construction of a dedicated generator plant for the entire Children's Wisconsin campus, the construction of the Craig Yabuki Tower, which opened in early 2021, the construction of the Skywalk Building that took place between early 2021 and fall 2023, and a four-phase renovation to the hospital’s surgical services platform which now has 15 new operating rooms, two hybrid/cardiac cath labs, three special procedure rooms, 22 recovery rooms, and 42 day surgery rooms.
Located prominently on West Connell Court, near the Craig Yabuki Tower, the Skyway Building was funded in part by the Ladish Co. Foundation and the Jendusa family.
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