About

Located adjacent to the emergency department with 16 beds, the CDU provides an alternative for patients in need of intermediate care who don’t require inpatient hospital admission.

Since the inception of observation medicine in the 1970s, the number of admitted patients under observation status has steadily increased from about 10% to more than 40%. These patients can be effectively managed in an observation unit like our CDU, where we are able to provide expedited, safe and cost-effective care when compared to inpatient admission.

Conditions we most commonly diagnose and treat include the following:

Abdominal pain
Acute gastroenteritis
Acute renal colic
Anemia
Asthma
Atrial fibrillation
Chest pain
Congestive heart failure
Dehydration
Pneumonia
Pyelonephritis
Syncope and collapse

Our team takes a multidisciplinary approach, and we collaborate with nursing staff, social workers, physical therapists and other specialists to achieve the best outcomes in a short period of time — usually less than 23 hours.

Mission

Our mission is to provide timely, comprehensive, cost effective and compassionate care to patients under observation status by optimal resource utilization.

Message from the Chair

We’re national leaders in this. Complex observation requires more physician time, more expertise and a collaborative approach, and that’s what we do in our CDU. – Pawan Suri, M.D.

Education

Medical Students

Third-year medical students get hands-on experience in the CDU during their foundational elective in observation medicine, and fourth-year medical students spend time in the CDU as part of their acting internship rotation in Emergency Medicine.

Residents

Emergency medicine residents rotate through the CDU during their second year of training. Residents in the combined emergency medicine and internal medicine (EM-IM) program have the added option of choosing an Observation Medicine/Administration track which allows them to get in-department training in observation medicine, including learning how to make a business case for starting a unit and determining staffing and protocols.

Some of our former EM-IM residents have gone on to become directors of nascent observation units.