Since 1994 the department has worked with the NIH National Heart Lung & Blood Institute to evaluate community interventions to hasten therapy for myocardial infarction (heart attack). The educational tools developed in this multicenter project will be used in an upcoming campaign by the National Heart Attack Alert Program to increase community awareness of heart attack symptoms and how those patients or accompanying friends/family should facilitate rapid care.

Beginning in the mid-1990s the department initiated a program to evaluate medical informatics as a tool to enhance emergency care. This effort has evolved in many directions, including a collaborative project with the Oregon Health Division sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control, to perform real-time disease surveillance monitoring of emergency department cases.

The department also was instrumental in the establishment of Academic Emergency Medicine the premier scientific journal in the field of Emergency Medicine. The journal is one of only two monthly peer-reviewed journals in the field and is the official journal of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine. Jerris Hedges, M.D., served as founding editor from 1993-1997. Terri Schmidt, M.D., the department's vice-chairperson for academic programs, continues as an associate editor of the journal.

The OHSU Hospital emergency department has always served as the primary clinical practice site and educational venue for the academic department. In 1965 the OHSU Hospital Emergency Department first opened as a comprehensive 17-bed unit. For the next 32 years, this facility underwent a series of renovations to improve patient care delivery and has continuously served as the emergency facility for OHSU Hospital and Doernbecher Children's Hospital.

The emergency department moved to a new state-of-the-art facility on July 1, 1997. The facility is approximately 21,000 square feet with 42 patient care rooms, including special rooms for acute stabilization, psychiatric treatment, short stay (i.e., observation unit), urgent care and pediatric acute care. The total Emergency Department volume grew 10% in fiscal year 1998-1999 and 22% in fiscal year 1999-2000. Pediatric volume grew by more than 30% during the same interval. Approximately 85% of all patients are residents of the closest surrounding three counties.

The Emergency Communications Center of the Emergency Department was originally grant-funded by the Collins Foundation in 1977. In 1982 the facility was designated as the exclusive Medical Resource Hospital for the City of Portland/County of Multnomah for physician/paramedic consultation. The Emergency Communications Center now provides paramedic consultations for both Multnomah and Clackamas counties in addition to supporting the regional trauma system in the tri-county Portland-Metro area. In 1986 1,407 paramedic consultations were provided by department faculty. The Emergency Communications Center now facilitates 40,000 phone and radio calls per month, including 300 trauma entries, 350 Medical Resource physician consultation calls, 600 community assistance calls and 800 HEAR radio calls per month.

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