Emergency Department

The Emergency department at Fairbanks Memorial Hospital provides round-the-clock emergency medical care to the residents of Fairbanks and the entire Alaska Interior. With board-certified emergency physicians, specially trained nurses and support staff, and the latest medical technologies, the Emergency department is well-equipped to diagnose and treat an array of illnesses and injuries.

As part of the Greater Fairbanks Community Hospital Foundation’s long-range expansion and renovation initiative, we began construction to expand our Emergency department in 2006. Now complete, the expansion enlarged the waiting room, increased the number of private treatment rooms from 15 to 27, added two triage rooms, created drive-thru ambulance bays, and remodeled the inpatient imaging center used to diagnose and treat emergency and hospital inpatients.

In addition, $90,000 from the State of Alaska Department of Health & Social Services helped offset the cost of our highly specialized decontamination facility.

Built with disaster preparedness in mind, the decontamination facility has an array of special features including separate men’s and women’s showers, which are finished with a mono-coating of hybrid material that eliminates cracks and allows for easy decontamination. Additional protective features of the facility include drains that feed into a dedicated containment tank, a ventilation system that includes pressure monitors to ensure constant negative pressure, radiant floor heating to prevent contaminants from escaping through heating ducts, and explosion-proof light, switch and electrical outlet coverings.

The new facility gives Fairbanks Memorial Hospital the capacity to decontaminate up to 250 patients in three hours in the event of a hazardous contamination incident. The new facility also makes Fairbanks Memorial Hospital an integral part of the Fairbanks North Star Borough Emergency Operations Plan.