USD Magazine Summer 2006

Starks says that getting out on the floor and interacting with patients keeps him sane.

implemented. One day last October, every ER in San Diego was over- whelmed. Full moon or freakish fate, all day long the waiting room at the Naval Medical Center was clogged. Ambulances arrived hourly. “It was a hospital traffic jam,” Starks recalls. “In America, people want high-quality health care, and they want it right away. We had to make changes.” Starks focused on triage time. “There’s no reason we shouldn’t be getting to patients in the first five minutes.” It’s later in the day now, when the critical-care volume picks up. A boy with a bruised face goes by in a wheelchair. At the bedside of a sleeping woman, a soldier in camouflage and tall black boots stares at a monitor, its electro-luminescent waveforms tracking to the right. The manic pulse of television’s “ER” is rare, though it does happen. Most

people who come through the door need non-urgent care. But that doesn’t keep Starks from innovating: “You never know when we’re going to be bursting at the seams again. I want my people to make quicker decisions.” In the waiting room, a big sigh comes from a frazzled, bed-headed man in a T-shirt, shorts and sandals, his legs ghostly white. It’s a sigh of relief: a corpsman is cradling his arm and pumping up the blood pressure cuff. Soon, the man is on his feet and shuffling into the ER, holding out an elbow for Starks, who, taking it, greets him. “Good afternoon, sir.” His touch is gentle, affirming. “You a doctor?” “No sir. I am a nurse.”

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