Emergency Efforts

Free-standing ER facility is unique in Westerville

OHIOHEALTH

Is Working

to make the typically stressful emergency room experience as hassle-free as possible.

On June 20, the doors will open at the newest addition to the OhioHealth Westerville Campus, located on Polaris Parkway: a free-standing emergency facility.

The new Emergency Care Center will treat patients and send them home to their doctor or to a hospital. Unlike most emergency facilities, OhioHealth’s is not connected to a hospital, streamlining the trip from front door to ER.

The new facility adjoins a three-yearold multiple-use medical building that contains outpatient surgery; physical rehabilitation, including a swimming pool; doctor’s offices; and other facilities. The Westerville City School District also has an office there for student registration and other matters. Neither OhioHealth facility can accommodate overnight patients.

The attached two-story, 16-bed emergency facility is designed so the staff can quickly greet the sick or injured, get them into a room and begin diagnosis and treatment. A nurse will see each patient within 15 minutes of arrival.

Jean Halpin, OhioHealth’s vice president of health center operations, oversaw design of the center. The rapid population growth and demographic changes in the Westerville area and the kinds of patients the facility will serve were the main data used in determining its size and facilities. Physicians provided more input about treatment needs.

The facility addresses numerous patient priorities, Halpin says – to get in and out quickly, to be greeted and told where they are going, to be seen as quickly as possible to determine whether more testing is needed. Blood work, X-rays, CT scans and ultrasounds are among the tests possible in the facility.

Because the center is not equipped or designed to give complete treatment to heart, stroke or serious injury patients, local emergency squads are not expected to deliver those patients to the emergency facility. OhioHealth has talked to local squads about the types of patients that should be taken directly to other emergency rooms. If they arrive anyway, the Westerville center will stabilize the patients before they’re moved for proper treatment.

Walk-in patients are the other side of the coin. A friend or relative might bring in someone with chest pains with a serious injury. And that’s no problem.

With a staff of physicians, nurses and others on duty at all times, a proper diagnosis can be made quickly. Colin Yoder, OhioHealth media relations director, describes the “golden hour,” the all-important time period during which diagnosis is made and a patient is stabilized before treatment. As the result, “The chances of survival go up significantly,” he says.

If a patient needs to be hospitalized, fully equipped MedCare ambulances –owned by the company that also owns MedFlight helicopters – will be on the grounds at all times to deliver the person to a hospital after the Emergency Care Center staff stabilizes him or her. “We work through the Mt. Carmel or Riverside transfer centers” to designate the hospital, Halpin says.

Ambulances were selected as an alternative to potential helicopter flights partly because neighbors worried about noisy flights. “We were happy to hear the concerns and have the input of the community,” Halpin says. Besides, a waiting ambulance – all are equipped to be trauma units if a nurse comes along for the ride –may move a patient more quickly than would a helicopter that’s several minutes away.

Patient rooms – all equipped with televisions, large windows and space for visitors – have solid walls and doors, assuring comfort and privacy; “no curtains in here,” Halpin says. The emergency department rooms in Dublin Methodist Hospital, another OhioHealth facility, were the model, she says.