ER Doctor Barry Wagner

Meet the Man Who has a Plan to Change the ED

Vital Stats
Spouse: Amy
Children: Lyndsay and Seth
Hobbies: Music, writing, running, travel, and family. "My two passions in life are medicine and music."
Business Interests:

• Owner and President of Doctor's Orders Musical Enterprises, Critical Care Publishing, and House Calls Publishing, companies responsible for music publishing, producing, and personal management for artists.
• Co-founder of Wagner Brothers Development Company, a developer of residential areas in Sequatchie Valley.
• Script consultant for NBC's TV show ER.

Dr. Barry Wagner became Chairman of Emergency Medicine at Hutcheson on May 5, 2000. He is both a down-to-earth doctor and a visionary; a practical, no-nonsense businessman and an artist. He's sincere about good emergency care and he's committed to treating your family like his own.

Q: What is your vision for the Emergency Department (ED) at Hutcheson?

A: My philosophy is that the ED is the "front door" of the hospital. In a nutshell, our goal is to "organize chaos and optimize outcome." Immediate future plans include recruiting additional emergency medicine physicians to complement the fine group of caregivers already employed here. We hope to enhance public awareness of the quality and number of services that we offer at this hospital. We hope to improve patient processing with regard to accessing emergency care. In other words, we hope to decrease the turn-around time in which patients are seen, evaluated, treated, and discharged.

Q: You've been visiting the ED at Hutcheson for the past few months, observing and talking to ED staff and patients. Now, you are coming into the ED to lead it. What do you feel are the biggest problems in the ED that you will have to address immediately?

A: The biggest problem that I've seen so far is that of the image of the ED--and I hope to address that head-on. The image of Hutcheson's ED is hurt by inadequate communication among the ED staff, the patient, and the patient's family.It is also hurt by long waiting periods and long lengths of stay in the ED. Emergency medicine is difficult because it is a "one-chance" encounter with the patient. I plan on implementing measures to make a patient's experience here as positive as possible. This involves rendering good care in a compassionate environment in a timely manner. In addition, we hope to have better communication with patients and their families and keep them better informed throughout the whole time they are in the ED.

Q: Ten years ago, you were with Hutcheson as an ED staff physician. Now you're coming back as an administrator. How do you feel about your return to this community? With your knowledge of Hutcheson's history, where do you see the hospital heading now?

A: What I see happening here at this Medical Center is real change. What we do best is community medicine, and our goal, it seems to me, is to take that to the people here in our three counties and to serve them as best we can. We're not a Level I Trauma Center--we don't want to be. But we want to do what we do in an excellent fashion, and let people know that we can do that. I'm excited to be a part of HMC's team under the mature wisdom and elite experience of Dr. Robert Jones and the energy of bright, young, capable vice presidents. I feel that this hospital will continue to be a leader in this community's medical environment. I'm looking forward to the challenge before me and I consider it a privilege to be involved in this fine institution with its employees and physicians. I don't promise perfection--but I do promise commitment to provide good emergency care.

Hollywood Calling
"One day, a couple of years ago, I got a call from Hollywood. I thought the nurses were playing a joke on me. They said, 'You've got a call from the producer of ER.'

I took the call, and it really was the producer of ER. He asked if I would serve as a script consultant for the show, and I've been doing it ever since. Essentially, what happens is he calls me and we have a dialogue on the phone. I tell him about real-life ER experiences, and then he goes back to the scriptwriters and has them change the names and write our experiences into the scenes. There are several ER doctors around the country who do this--I just happen to be one of them.

As an ER doctor, I try to tell the producer what I feel, what I see, the nuances of bad things happening to good people, and how that impacts me. It's specifics: This child came in, had been shot here, and this is what we did, and this is how she reacted to the treatment. Most phone calls are lengthy. We talk about the hard things, but we talk about humorous things, too, like one guy swallowed Christmas tree bulbs. I think the scriptwriters do an adequate job of showing what happens in an ER and what the emotional component of an event is. It's a pretty realistic show. I don't watch ER unless it's with my children. It's my profession--I get it every day."

Republished from Living Well, Summer, 2000, a publication of Hutcheson Medical Center