MANSFIELD – OhioHealth has made another significant investment into Richland County with plans to build a $5.3 million freestanding emergency department in Ontario.
The 8,000 square-foot building will be located in front of Meijer on Lexington-Springmill Rd. and is projected to open in 2017. Smaller than a typical emergency department, the space will host eight patient bays and allows for a more responsive patient/physician experience.
Jean Halpin, president of OhioHealth Mansfield and Shelby Hospitals, said this will be the first freestanding emergency care facility in Richland County. She emphasized the importance of investing in care access close to home.
“OhioHealth’s philosophy is to keep care local as often as possible,” Halpin said. “It’s all about being accessible and convenient, no matter where someone lives. We want to provide the right care, at the right time, at the right place for our patients.”
Freestanding emergency departments are not the same as urgent cares. Freestanding emergency departments provide emergency care for severe or life-threatening conditions like severe bleeding, shortness of breath or chest pain. Urgent care is for non-life-threatening injuries or illnesses like minor burns, the flu or allergic reactions.
The OhioHealth Ontario emergency department will operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week and will be staffed by emergency medicine physicians and nurses. Halpin explained the emergency department team will serve in Mansfield, Shelby and Ontario to allow for more physician integration, but that new jobs would also be added in Ontario.
The main reason for the new emergency department is to decompress the emergency departments in OhioHealth Mansfield and Shelby Hospitals, Halpin said. A majority of OhioHealth’s patients come through the emergency departments; Shelby Hospital’s emergency department has nine patient bays while Mansfield’s has 32.
A recent online poll by the American College of Emergency Physicians showed that 86 percent of emergency physicians expect patient visits to increase over a three-year period. As hospital-based emergency rooms get busier, freestanding emergency departments can help alleviate the crowding and long wait times.
According to Halpin, the average wait time for a patient to see an emergency physician at OhioHealth Mansfield Hospital has decreased from 120 minutes to 31 minutes in the past two years. A freestanding emergency department would decrease that wait time even further.
“Because it’s not connected to the hospital and it’s much smaller, this design will allow for faster door-to-doctor time,” Halpin said. “In the other freestanding models in our system, the average wait time is four minutes.”
In addition, a freestanding emergency department will experience less waiting time due to more severe cases being transported to a hospital-based emergency department. A patient visiting a traditional emergency department with only a minor emergency may experience a delay in receiving treatment while the more severe cases are tended to.
“We will work with EMS as we have done in other communities so they know who to bring to the right emergency department and when,” Halpin said. “The majority of patients will either drive in themselves or be driven in. The emergency services team will bring patients to either emergency department, and they know where to go.”
The addition of OhioHealth’s freestanding emergency department in Ontario will be one of two options for emergency care in a two-mile radius. Last November, Avita Health System’s Ontario hospital announced a 22-bed, 24-hour emergency department as part of their second phase of expansion. Completion is also expected in early 2017.
“Competition is a good thing for the community,” Halpin said. “It keeps healthcare providers providing their highest service, and it allows patients a choice. As we look at development in the nearby campus district and 30 corridor, you still want to give patients a choice.”
OhioHealth will also be investing $2 million in OhioHealth Mansfield Hospital’s Level II Trauma Center within the next two years, and $800,000 in the emergency entrance of OhioHealth Shelby Hospital. The Mansfield hospital is the only trauma center within a 60-mile radius.
Despite being separated by a “six-mile hallway,” Halpin expects the same hospital-quality care to apply to the Ontario emergency department.
“This is a solution,” she said. “It creates access closer to home, it decompresses the tertiary care emergency departments – making it easier for patients – and it’s still a quality extension of our hospital.”
