Huntington Hospital Gets New ER Chief

The new emergency room chief is a familiar face in the halls of .

Dr. Michael Stratemeier was recently named chief of emergency services at the hospital but formerly served as associate chief and director of clinical services in the hospital's emergency department. 

The graduate of the University of Buffalo School of Medicine and Cornell University presides over a busy and changing department.

For those who picture emergency rooms as places for treating trauma and nothing more,  Stratemeier has a point to make: there's a lot going on in his department.

"We certainly provide a safety net. What you and I think is not an emergency may be an emergency to another person," Stratemeier said. "We have an aging population; people have more, real problems.

"We're a trauma center. And EMS brings us a relatively sick population, cases of penetrating wounds, bad car crashes, the full gamut," he said.

Huntington's emergency room sees an average 140 patients a day, he said.

Throughout the year, that translates into about 50,000 visits, with an admission rate of 25 percent. "We have an admission rate of over 25 percent, which is an indication of the acuity" of illness or other problems.

The goal is to treat and stabilize patients, moving them along to the appropriate next level of care, as needed, including, eventually, into an observation unit for patients ready for discharge in less than 24 hours. 

One of the goals for the department is treat patients within 30 minutes.  Another is to strengthen its growing pediatric emergency care service, and another is to renovate the waiting room and trauma areas.

The hospital is conducting surveys of patients to assess their care and the responses are encouraging. "That our patient satisfaction scores are the highest we've seen is a tribute to the people and processes we've instituted," he said.

Several staffers, including Stratemeier, are working with local first-aid squads and he said some nurses working as emergency medical technicians have been able to follow their patients throughout their treatment.

Starting next year,  and as part of the North Shore-Long Island Jewish system, Huntington will have Hofstra University medical students working at the hospital from the beginning of their training. "We're hoping to see students choose emergency medicine careers," he said. "The demand has gone up tremendously."

"You never know what's coming through the door. It's generally a high-stress environment. It's challenging--you have to be familiar with (how to handle) a lot, from taking a bead out a child's nose to saving the life of a person having a heart attack," he said.