BIRMINGHAM, AL – Exhausted from record levels of ER visits as reflected in recent CEDOCS scores, emergency department staff at University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Health System are taking a proactive approach and removing all blue hospital signs within a 5-mile radius in order to relieve things a tad.
“Our facility is pretty big, it’s not like it’s invisible to the naked eye,” said William Ferniany, Chief Executive Hospital of the UAB Health System. “But then you have all these blue signs at every street corner pointing us out, no wonder we’re so busy. We’re just sitting ducks. We had to do something about it.”
The Board of Directors at UAB Health System initially proposed changing the signs and pointing them towards other hospitals. They decided this ultimately would be, as one board member described it, “sorta dick” so they explored other options. Some suggested moving the signs, perhaps putting them behind large oak trees or parking signs as a form of cover.
Ultimately, with the blessing of hordes of UAB health care professionals, the board voted to remove the signs altogether, giving a reprieve not only to their hospital system but others as well. The response has been universally positive, and there has been no lack of volunteers, most of them nurses and doctors at UAB, to start uprooting the blue hospital signs.
Gomerblog spotted dozens of physicians throwing their pagers at one sign just one block east of UAB Hospital on 20th Street South, effectively killing two birds with one stone: the sign and their pagers. Every single of them had an ear-to-ear grin.
Once all signs have successfully been discarded and destroyed, the Board of Directors will look into initiatives that will provide the hospital system further cover by hiding it under one massive piece of tarp.
