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Emergency Services

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If you are experiencing a medical emergency, please dial 9-1-1.

  • Location and Directions
  • Wait Times
  • What to Expect
  • Infant Emergency Code

Emergency room health care in san diego

Contact Tri-City’s emergency room — 760.940.3505

Tri-City Medical Center is more than just a hospital – it has the most technologically-advanced Emergency Department in North San Diego County.
State-of-the-Art diagnostic equipment ensures you receive excellent care 24- hours a day. Our nationally-recognized electronic medical record system means your medical history is available at the touch of a button for instantaneous communication. Our hospital features a Paramedic Base Station and a Heart Attack/Stroke Receiving Center, making us well equipped to treats thousands of patients with outstanding care.

Programs & services

You’ll find specialized care at Tri-City Medical Center for conditions such as:
  • 41 Emergency beds for serious injuries and critical illnesses
  • 6 Fast Track beds for less acute illnesses and injuries
  • State-of-the-art diagnostic equipment
  • Electronic medical record system for patient safety
  • Bedside registration for fast tracking
  • North San Diego County designated Heart Attack Receiving Center
  • Joint Commission designated Primary Stroke Receiving Center
  • 2 fully digital cardiac catheterization laboratories
  • Dedicated rapid response team for critical cases
  • Code sepsis protocol to treat life-threatening infections
  • Therapeutic hypothermia care to significantly affect heart attack survival

Emergency services staff

  • Board-certified emergency physicians
  • Interventional radiologists
  • Registered nurses
  • Emergency department technicians
  • Scribes assigned to each case, allowing doctors to focus on patient care

Emergency services – location and directions

For minor emergencies, go directly to Emergency Services located on the west side of the Tri-City Medical Center campus.

Tri-City Medical Center
4002 Vista Way
Oceanside, CA 92056
Tel: 760.940.3505

Get Directions

Contact Tri-City’s Emergency Room — 760.940.3505

What to bring to emergency services

Tri-City Medical Center is more than just a hospital – it has the most technologically-advanced Emergency Department in North San Diego County.
  • Medications you are currently taking and the daily dosage for each
  • Name of your physician
  • Insurance card or insurance information
  • Emergency department technicians
  • List of allergies

Establishing a newborn emergency code

Caleb’s story

Right place, right time

With the right personnel on site and the right equipment in place, Tri-City Medical Center diagnosed and resuscitated 3-day-old Caleb Peltier. This life-saving care showed the need for a special code for medical emergencies involving infants. Learn about Caleb’s story and our experience with Code Caleb.

How code caleb was created
Tri-City Medical Center has had a newborn emergency code since April 2012. We identified the need in 2010 and spent a year and a half developing the policy and procedures we are sharing here for the benefit of other hospitals and their tiniest patients.
Read More “How Code Caleb Was Created”

FAQs

Before adopting “Code Caleb,” Tri-City was like most hospitals in California. It had a pediatric emergency code for patients 14 and younger. But emergency care for an unresponsive infant, who many be only a few hours or even minutes old, is vastly different from the care a 12-year-old needs.

 

The tools, dosages and expertise needed to diagnose and treat infants are specialized, and, therefore, any hospital with a neonatal care unit needs a code that brings its neonatal physicians and nurses to the emergency department immediately.

 

Consider also that while pediatric emergency codes are called regularly, only a tiny fraction are called for infants.

 

This is a high risk, low frequency patient population.

The code is accompanied by several additional best practices. A neonatal cart needs to be equipped in the emergency department with specialized tools so that the neonatal and ED teams can right-size care for tiny patients.   The code should also be treated as one segment of a continuum of care that starts in the field. When first responders receive training from hospital experts, it can also enhance neonatal survival and recovery.   Tri-City found that when EMT’s had been trained in care for babies in cardiac-pulmonary arrest, they worked to keep their body temperatures up during transportation. Any eventually might result in the code being called in the field.   For more information, please refer to Tri-City Medical Center’s Code Caleb policy.

Any hospital with an emergency department and a neonatal intensive care unit can adopt a newborn emergency code to bring its neonatal physicians and nurses to the emergency room immediately. Adopting such a code requires both departments to work together and train prior to the launch of the code.

 

It might also require equipping the hospital’s emergency room with a neonatal resuscitation cart with tools that are the right size for tiny patients.

In addition to the creation of “Code Caleb,” Caleb’s story was the driving force behind a new law, CA Assembly Bill 1731, requiring California hospitals to screen newborns for critical congenital heart defects before being sent home. Pulse oximetry screening, a simple, inexpensive test to measure oxygen levels, would have diagnosed Caleb’s illness before he was discharged from the hospital where he was born.

For more information about Code Caleb, read these articles:

“Life-threatening disease does not discriminate” – The Daily Transcript, Feb 8, 2013

“Infant heart testing law cheered by parents, doctors” – U-T San Diego, Sept. 18, 2012
“Bill to save newborns from heart disease inspired by local family” – 10News, Sept. 17, 2012
“Bill advances to compel heart test for newborns” – U-T San Diego, June 11, 2012
“Vista newborn inspires bill to help children” – U-T San Diego, June 8, 2012

Disclaimer

Please note, patients with the most serious illnesses and injuries are given priority. Wait times may be affected by the number of patients in the Emergency Department and the severity of their conditions.

Emergency room faq’s

Patients are treated based on their conditions. We must care for critical patients first. If you have a less severe illness or injury, you may have to wait while sicker or more severely injured patients are seen first.

 

If our triage nurse determines that your condition is less serious, you may be seen in our Fast Track area, which typically has a shorter waiting time. Sometimes there is no wait at all for Fast Track.

Your stay will depend on symptoms, illness, and whether you will be admitted to the hospital as an inpatient. Minor problems can often be handled in a couple of hours or less. Patients with complex illnesses may remain in the ER for several hours.

 

The time of day and day of the week may also determine how busy the Emergency Department is. Typically, we are busiest between 1 pm and 10 pm. Weekends and Mondays are usually the busiest days of the week.

What to expect in the emergency room

Tri-City Medical Center Emergency Services treats all injuries and illnesses and is staffed by specially trained doctors and nurses.

Emergency Room FAQ’s

When you arrive, you will meet with our triage nurse to explain your symptoms.

This nurse talks with you about why you are here, your medical history, and any medications you are taking.

Your blood pressure, temperature, and heart rate will also be measured and recorded.

Our registrar will speak to you or a family member, if you are too ill.

The registrar will take your name, address, other contact information, and the name of your regular doctor.

Insurance information will also be given to the registrar.

You will be asked to sign a consent form, giving us permission to treat you and to bill your insurance.

After you have registered you may experience some or all of the following:

 

Placement in the patient care area, with ongoing care from a designated area nurse. If the Emergency Department is full, you may be placed in a temporary waiting area until a bed becomes available.

Blood may be drawn for tests. Tests can take an hour or more to complete.

X-rays may be taken. X-ray results will be provided to you during your visit after being examined by the Emergency Department doctor and radiology doctor. CAT scans or other specialized images often take more time to complete.

An EKG, tracing your heart activity, may be performed.

Fast Track is the non-acute section of the Emergency Department and often has shorter wait times.

 

Patients seen here are those who can be treated quickly and efficiently, with cases that are less complicated than those treated in the acute-care of the Emergency Department.

You may have blood drawn for laboratory tests, X-rays ordered, stitched placed, and bandages and splints applied. A nurse will help care for you.

A doctor can write prescriptions and arrange follow-up care with your regular doctor or a specialist.