How to Choose a Right Hospital for Critical Moments - Everything You Need to Know

By Dr. Sanjay Jaiswal in Emergency & Trauma

Dec 08 , 2023 | 2 min read

Choosing the Right Hospital for Your Critical Moments

Imagine if you are having severe chest pain. Where do you go? What if one side of your body stops working? Where do you go? You have breathing difficulty, high-grade fever, some poisoning, burns, severe pain in the abdomen, vomiting blood, or your child is sick. Where would you go? Where should you go?

You definitely need to go to an Emergency Department (ED) of a hospital.

However, it is important to know beforehand what people should look for in an ED to get the correct care at the correct time, by the correct people. Immediately off the bat, you think of location as your prime aspect, but you should also remember that it should be filling the following criteria:

Any ED you visit should house well-qualified emergency medicine doctors operating the department who are highly trained in the field of emergency medicine. They are always your first point of contact and should know the art and science of resuscitation.
Not only should there be an agile and competent ED team, but all specialities should also be present round-the-clock. Super specialities like neurology & neurosurgery, cardiology & cardiac surgery, nephrology, respiratory medicine, etc. should be available in the hospital 24/7. Well-developed brain stroke teams, heart attack teams, and trauma teams should also be available. It is not only integral to be able to take in patients but also to be able to provide the right care at the right time and divert the patient to the right doctor, which is also a fundamental foundation of a high-performing ED.
Round-the-clock radiology and laboratory services are also essential to providing world-class care. The hospital should have MRI, CT scan, and ultrasound services available 24/7.
A well-resourced ED with the latest and necessary equipment is essential in providing the latest evidence-based care to patients.
Another aspect you should look for is correspondence and collaboration of multiple specialities in one case if needed. All these emergency specialists should be available in the hospital at all times.
To add, one must also look for how good the pre-hospital care is, how quick the ambulance response is, and whether they have an advanced life support ambulance with trained and qualified paramedics.
Infrastructure, large spaces, and sufficient beds in the emergency department should also be considered when heading to the hospital.

Most tertiary care hospitals have trained emergency medicine teams working in large departments with adequate resources and providing world-class, evidence-based acute care. One should do a recce, find the nearest such departments, and add them to their list in an emergency.

One should be aware of good emergency services in their area before heading towards one when time matters for their healthy life.