The Observation Unit
From primary care to specialty care, to imaging, and even rehabilitation, Lee Health Coconut Point offers patients in south Lee County a variety of outpatient medical services. “It benefits everyone. We get to keep them in their community and provide the care they need right here at home,” said Terry Beasley, Director of Nursing at Lee Health Coconut Point.
If a patient comes in through the emergency department and needs continued assessment, they can be moved to the observation unit. “The observation unit is a nine-bed unit that allows us to do additional monitoring of patients after they have been worked up in the ER. Maybe they’re not quite ready to go home, but not quite sick enough to warrant an inpatient admission, but it gives us a little more time to monitor them and do some additional testing,” she said.
Nearly 88 percent of patients who receive care in the observation unit are discharged without having to be transferred to the hospital. “The typical patients that we see are chest pains or abdominal pains that aren’t clearly critical in needing to go to an acute care facility for intervention,” said Beasley.
Patients in the observation unit also have access to physical therapy consults and testing like stress tests. “We have the ability to provide consults with our cardiologists and also neurology for patients that are in our observation unit. We use telemedicine. So, patients don’t need to leave here to see a cardiologist or to see the neurologist,” she said.
A service that’s bridging the gap between the emergency department and inpatient care.
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Lee Health in Fort Myers, FL is the largest network of health care facilities in Southwest Florida and is highly respected for its expertise, innovation and quality of care. For more than 100 years, we’ve been providing our community with personalized preventative health services and primary care to highly specialized care services and robotic assisted surgeries. Lee Health - Caring People. Inspiring Care.
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