World's First Airport Emergency Department Opens in Dallas

The  next time you’re feeling under the weather on a flight, you might take comfort in knowing that the world’s first airport emergency room opened last week at the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport.

While the airport already has a pharmacy and an urgent care, those facilities are meant more for minor ailments, whereas the new freestanding ER will serve patients with more serious conditions like chest pain.

These medical care facility projects at DFW are the brainchildren of Texas company Code 3 ER and Urgent Care. According to Dallas News, Texas has regulations that allow freestanding emergency facilities to be built, separate from full-on hospital buildings. These regulations allow companies like Code 3 to provide emergency services without the costly endeavor of constructing an entire hospital.

The ER comes fully equipped with technology like CT scanners, X-ray, and ultrasound machines, as well as a lab, a pharmacy, and a full staff of doctors and nurses. The staff at the ER also use state-of-the-art communication platform, Pulsara, to quickly exchange patient information, estimated time of arrival, and other data with local EMS to get critical patients treated sooner.

According to the article published in Dallas News, Code 3's chief executive Carrie de Moor said “I think that there’s definitely a need … We definitely hope to see it expand not only in the United States but potentially throughout the world.”