Houston Methodist Division of Emergency Medicine 

The Houston Methodist Division of Emergency Medicine is led by locally and nationally known providers and researchers. Our board-certified physicians are recognized for clinical excellence, robust academic endeavors and groundbreaking research, furthering the field of emergency medicine. 

We are in constant motion, treating more than 170 patients each day. We admit more than 60% of patients — far above the national average — demonstrating our capacity to treat highly complex cases without the need to transfer to another facility. We model clinical and operational excellence by offering each patient thorough and expedited care, resulting in improved outcomes. 

Many Houston Methodist transplant and advanced heart failure patients are treated by our physicians at critical points in their journeys. We offer the most advanced life support options, such as ECMO therapy, which improves patients’ opportunity to move to the top of a transplant list. 

With access to the latest diagnostic technology, we quickly pinpoint the exact cause of symptoms, reducing time-to-treatment. We also employ predictive modeling to reduce unnecessary MRIs, simultaneously improving the accuracy of findings and uncovering rare and serious infections sooner. 

The expert emergency medicine physicians in our division are committed to providing the highest level of acute care and improving patient experience. We strive to foster an intricate balance of quality of care, time-critical diagnostics, decision-making and treatment. 

Our providers are committed to improving patient outcomes with increased efficiency. Our collaborative ethos leads to regular meetings with stroke, heart attack, imaging and lab teams, as well as ongoing process improvements.  

Our specialists are trained to recognize subtleties in symptoms that are easy to miss or overlook. One such example is dizziness, where one in a thousand people experiencing dizziness are actually having a small stroke. To be proactive, we use the NIH stroke scale and conduct a detailed neurological exam every time a patient mentions dizziness in the ER. 

Our Faculty ➝   Our Physicians ➝ 

Our researchers push the limits of what already exists to discover what is possible. We lead medicine by uncovering innovative ways to safely improve the standard of care for all divisions across the system. 

Emergency medicine specialists collaborate with other medical divisions throughout the system in the Houston Methodist Virtual Urgent Care program, reducing emergency room visits for non-emergency needs. 

Our team is also part of pilot testing the use of generative AI to reduce the physician’s clinical documentation burdens, ultimately allowing them more time to direct quality patient care. AI-generated patient chart summaries highlight key information about hospitalization and changes in condition, leading to accurate documentation and efficient handoffs from physician to physician, from nurse to nurse, and from physician to patient’s family. 

Improved safety, efficacy and quality of life for our patients are core drivers for the research we conduct. As an example, we are passionately in pursuit of new ways to treat chronic or acute back pain in elderly people without putting them at risk for falls that may occur with the use of traditional muscle relaxants. 

Our research leads to tangible results. For example, the length of visit to the emergency departments was reduced by two hours, with a median wait time of 17 minutes from arrival to meeting the doctor. Across the division, we continue to focus on internal and external process efficacy, reducing one hour of lab processing time, and decreasing time for CT and ultrasounds with imaging. Our patients always receive high quality care — and now they get that care even more efficiently. 

Our team is working hard to create a robust, multi-visit patient program. For patients who frequently come into the hospital, such as migraine or sickle cell patients, a comprehensive care plan follows them from hospital specialist to specialist in order to streamline treatment. 

The Houston Methodist Division of Emergency Medicine supports the complete spectrum of emergency care, ranging from critical care to complex lung, heart and neurocritical care. We mentor medical students, primary care residents, internal medicine residents and critical care fellows, teaching students to provide the best possible clinical care to each patient admitted to the emergency room. 

By leading with a comprehensive approach to teaching, we train the next generation of emergency medicine physicians to pursue excellence in clinical and patient satisfaction outcomes. 

We continue to make strides in connecting the community to emergency medical services, enhancing education in the community as it relates to emergency medicine. One area of key community outreach as related to emergency medicine is stroke, through the Eddy Scurlock Stroke Center, the first DNV-Certified Comprehensive Stroke Center in the U.S. 

As patients are brought in for emergency medical services, we provide just-in-time performance feedback for care received, allowing for immediate correction and ongoing process improvement. 

For internal physicians, we created an educational platform for training in the highest emergency medicine risk areas including stroke, heart attack and others. We also publish educational newsletters and create clinical management guidelines describing just-in-time teachings for rare and complex treatment.