First responders react to fallout of Peru hospital’s closing

By TOM COLLINS tcollins@shawmedia.com

If you live in Utica and have to send for an ambulance, the ambulance will no longer head west to the nearest hospital. It’ll now go east – to Ottawa.

This Saturday, St. Margaret’s Health is closing its Peru facility, the former Illinois Valley Community Hospital. But for EMS directors, the date circled in red is Thursday: St. Margaret’s told EMS agencies to send ambulances to Spring Valley two days ahead of the Peru closure. Spring Valley’s hospital and emergency room will remain open.

That forced EMS agencies to recompute their ambulance routes and response times. For Utica, the do-over math was particularly eye-popping.

“It does change things drastically for us because our closest hospital is now Ottawa,” said Utica Fire Chief Ben Brown, though he hastened to assure Utica residents, “As long as it’s not life-threatening, we’ll take you to the hospital you choose.”

On paper, OSF St. Elizabeth Medical Center in Ottawa is 3 miles closer to Utica than St. Margaret’s-Spring Valley. In practice, the Utica Fire Protection District is about 100 square miles and Brown had to compute not only distances but also time elapsed.

In 17 of 18 projections, Ottawa was a closer option, time-wise, for Utica

EMS. The result, Brown estimates, is an extra half hour to 45 minutes per call. His hope is Peru is reopened as a Rural Emergency Hospital and that it happens soon.

He’s not alone. With the notable exception of Peru, local EMS coordinators expressed concern with how they’ll beat the clock while racing to Spring Valley.

St. Margaret’s logs 9,660 visits to the

February 7th @ Putnam County High School

Spring Valley hospital – that figure is expected to double – but EMS directors could not project how many more patients will arrive by ambulance. Segregating emergency from non-emergency dispatches required data analysis that couldn’t be completed in time for this story. Not every EMS call ends in a hospital transfer, either. Victims routinely decline transfer or are treated at the scene.

For now, the focus is on covering the distance between the Peru and Spring Valley hospitals, about 4 miles, as quickly as possible.

Brent Hanson, director of Peru Volunteer Ambulance Service, said he’s confident of only nominal changes, though PVAS certainly will reevaluate the situation as it unfolds.

“We’re going to see how it works for a bit,” Hanson said.

La Salle Fire Chief Jerry Janick, however, is less confident of a smooth transition.

“We are going to be adding time, mileage and out-of-service time to the equation,” Janick said. “And also, with how many added patients they’ll have, what’s the wait time going to be when you get there to transfer the patient to the staff?”