In Case of Emergency

"As an emergency doctor, you have to be good at everything, like a multi-tool Swiss army knife," says Dr. Rameen Shafiei, director of Emergency Medicine.

They are a team of nearly 100 specially trained medical professionals. And with an on-site complement of 30 or so at any given time, they handle nearly 34,000 emergencies here every year. They are your friends and family members, and these specially trained workers care deeply about keeping you alive when you come to the UPMC WMD Emergency Department.

Dr. Rameen Shafiei, a local native, leads the charge, his high energy and big personality a good fit for the Emergency Department (ED). Born to a neurologist and an ED nurse in Cumberland, he earned board certification as an emergency medicine physician and came home to practice. Along the way he married his local sweetheart, now a nurse in Same Day Surgery, and they have two beautiful children, a 6-year-old son and a 4-year-old daughter. Their community roots – past, present, and future – only underscore his sincere drive to have the best medical care possible locally. He says, “I know the standards I put in place, the achievements we’ve worked toward, will eventually impact my loved ones. We’re doing unto others as we would want them to do for us.”

“As an emergency doctor, you have to be good at everything, like a multi-tool Swiss army knife. In a rural setting, you learn to navigate your system and provide the best care possible at home.” Shafiei works alongside Clinical Director Wendy Helms to do just that. Wendy, a master’s prepared nurse, has dedicated 24 years to emergency medicine and echoes Rameen’s heartfelt commitment to our area. “It’s important to me, to all of us, to make a difference in our hometown – we have friends and family in this community.”

Together, they oversee the care of nearly 100 patients every day, beginning with an immediate evaluation. Staff members determine the urgency of each illness or injury that come through their doors, and they ensure that life-threatening conditions take priority. Unlike many places, an Emergency Department is never “first come, first served.”

The UPMC Western Maryland Emergency Department carries the distinction as a Level III Trauma Center. State-certified trauma center staff are equipped to respond immediately to life-threatening situations; specialized surgeons must be on site within 30 minutes. So critical is the window immediately following a trauma, that it has been termed “the golden hour” and can easily mean the difference between life and death.

The presence of the UPMC Western Maryland Trauma Center – the only one within 60 miles – makes an enormous impact in saving lives. With patient volumes and a full spectrum of serious and life-threatening conditions, triage is a never-ending juggling act and the emergency room is often filled to overflowing. Dr. Shafiei, Wendy, and their team work diligently to manage patient throughput and ED wait times, and at Western Maryland, several of the root causes – the national nursing shortage, opioid pandemic, and patients who use the ED for non-urgent care – are being addressed.

In fact, the UPMC Western Maryland ED was cited as having the second most improved patient satisfaction score across all 40 UPMC hospitals in 2024. While there is still work to be done, Dr. Shafiei and Wendy have implemented vital solutions along the way.

• Vertical Care ensures patients are seen by a provider within 30 minutes of arrival, with tests and treatments being initiated in the waiting room if necessary. At high-census times, diagnostic testing is streamlined using pre-set clinical protocols, as in the story below:

Allie showed up with a painful headache. Young and otherwise healthy, she had gone first to urgent care, who sent her to the ED with concerns. Upon initial evaluation, her condition appeared non-life threatening. Vital signs were stable. But the concern from urgent care was a red flag, so the predetermined protocol was followed and a CT scan was ordered. Within ten minutes, an intracranial hematoma – a brain bleed – was revealed. She was immediately ushered into the operating room, saving her life.

• Bedside ultrasound (rarely available in community hospitals) offers immediate scans without further moving the patient, critical to ensuring that such conditions as fluid in the chest or abdomen are caught early.

• A new Admission Discharge Unit cares for inpatients cleared for discharge but delayed by transportation or other needs. This unit frees up inpatient beds for patients being admitted through the ED.

• Resources of the UPMC network improve care as the ED accesses expertise in pediatric specialties and specialized training for nurses. “When we integrated with UPMC in 2020, we began sharing ideas and practices between all the EDs,” Rameen notes. UPMC Children’s is ranked in the Top Ten nationally.

• A new ED TeleStroke program utilizes neurologists who provide immediate consultations for the assessment and treatment of stroke patients.

  
  

“It’s a challenging environment,” says Shafiei, “but we are constantly trying to find ways to improve and better meet our patients’ needs.” In the end, says Shafiei, it comes down to the competence of his team, a strong, experienced group of professionals who care deeply about this community… and you.

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