Nebraska Medicine is expanding its emergency medicine department

The ER at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, NE

Nebraska medicine announced plans on Wednesday to begin a $2.2 million expansion of Nebraska Medical Center's current emergency department, starting on January 3rd.

Dr. Michael Wadman, chairman of the emergency medicine department at the
University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, NE

The expansion is intended to accommodate an anticipated increase in patient volume as Omaha's population ages.

The medical center will add seven private exam rooms, extra workstations, and complete minor upgrades to eight existing critical-care emergency department rooms at the Nebraska Medical Center emergency department. The medical center also plans to add two emergency room doctors and several nurses to its existing staff.

Existing administrative office spaces, a staff lounge, and a conference room in the current facilities will be demolished to make room for the expansion.

Existing patient care areas will not be affected during construction, and the expansion construction project is expected to wrap up by early June.

"The timing is right," said newly appointed University of Nebraska Medical Center's emergency medicine chairman Dr. Michael Wadman, M.D. “The ED expansion will allow us to accommodate an anticipated increase in patient volume over the next several years. Our mission is to provide timely, high quality emergency care for all of our patients, and this project will provide the space we need.”

New undergraduate college program puts UNO undergrads on affirmative action path to UNMC College of Medicine

Minority undergraduate students at UNO are being fast-tracked to UNMC College of Medicine,
but it's not an 'affirmative action program' according to UNO and UNMC officials.

The Urban Health Opportunities Program provides tuition, mentoring, and other benefits to undergraduate students at the University of Nebraska at Omaha who want to be doctors in Omaha, especially in the underserved northeast and southeast areas of Omaha.

Undergrads enrolled in the Urban Health Opportunities Program at UNO
are mentored and fast-tracked into UNMC College of Medicine as a way
to avoid the label of being part of an 'affirmative action program'

Those who satisfy program requirements will get into medical school at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. The program is a way to increase diversity among doctors in the region.

While program officials say this isn’t affirmative action, it is nonetheless an effort to introduce more minorities into the medical field, especially those who can speak foreign languages and who have a passion for working in low-income communities.

This is about improving access to health care for many in the community and not about meeting quotas, said Dr. Jeff Hill, associate dean of admissions and student affairs at the UNMC College of Medicine.

Hill said minorities make up only about 10 percent of the first-year class in the College of Medicine this semester. Currently 13 undergraduate students representing all four classes are taking part in the program, which began this year. Three freshmen will join the program each year.