Funded Programs

Republic of Georgia Emergency Department Program

The purpose of the Republic of Georgia Emergency Department Program is to modernize the emergency departments of the Central Clinical (Republican) Hospital in Tbilisi and the Imereti Regional Hospital in Kutaisi, Republic of Georgia. This program builds on the successful partnership Emory University has with the Iashvili Children’s Hospital in Tbilisi, which resulted in the transformation of its emergency services from a Soviet style “admitting room” to a modern emergency department. In addition to modernizing the emergency departments of the two hospitals, the specific goals of this project are to:

• Introduce the concept of pre-hospital care to the region,
• Develop a country-wide emergency care network in the Republic of Georgia using the two completed projects in Tbilisi and Kutaisi as its first two nodes,
• Introduce the specialty of emergency medicine to the region,
• Examine the effect changes in hospital emergency departments have on hospital budgets, patients’ utilization of specialists in emergency rooms, the numbers of hospital admissions from the emergency department, hospital length of stay, quality of care, and patient satisfaction, and
• Provide a global health experience for Emory students, house staff, and faculty.

For more information, contact:
Kenneth Walker, MD
Professor
Emory University School of Medicine
kwalk04@emory.edu