Mercy’s second emergency department is expected to open this winter. A new facility to house the center is being built next to Mercy’s Orthopedic Hospital south of Springfield.
This week, some Mercy Springfield leaders went to the site to sign one of the concrete pillars located in what will soon be the new ED patient check-in.
Cindy Beck is vice president of patient care services for Mercy and specifically oversees its emergency departments. She says they hope the new center will help alleviate the demand for emergency care they’re seeing at the ED on the main campus and reduce patient wait times.
"We've definitely seen the volumes of the patients increase here at our main campus," said Cindy Beck, Mercy vice-president of patient care services, specifically over the emergency departments. "In addition to that, I would say the patients who are coming are also a higher acuity level of patient. So, really, the patients that are presenting to our emergency department are taking a longer time to care for them. So this will offload some of that burden for some of our lower acute but still appropriate for emergency care patients."
Mercy Springfield spokesperson Ettie Berneking said Mercy’s emergency department is seeing about a thousand more patients each month than it did last year.
Beck said they’re expecting between 15,000 and 18,000 patient visits annually at the new facility.
The new ED will have 11 beds, including a trauma room, an isolation room, two patient holding rooms, a patient of size room and seven standard treatment rooms. It will also offer dedicated imaging, a lab and a pharmacy.
It’s designed for those with things like broken bones – lower acuity patients whose illnesses and injuries aren’t life threatening. Higher acuity patients can present there and stabilized but will then be taken to the main emergency department.
