UPDATED OPINION: Free-standing ER's drain health resources

UPDATED OPINION:  It's relieving to see Swedish closing one of their free standing Emergency Rooms (ER's)...the Issaquah facility. These ER's drain insurance company resources and the consumers who must buy their policies.

Hospitals use stand-alone ER's to attract the affluent and patients with good-paying insurance. It's about marketing and gaining share, and little about improving the quality of healthcare.

These ER's have millions of dollars tied up in specialists, imaging, laboratories and other technology.  Free-standing ER services are duplicated at hospitals and outpatient imaging centers.

Evergreen Hospital is a sorry example of this excess.  Evergreen Hospital is using millions of taxpayer levy monies to finance their relatively new Hospital ER.  Evergreen's Director of Governance reports they don't have percent occupancy data, but it's known in community circles the hospital emergency department is operating at about 60% to 70% capacity over time.

Yet, when Evergreen found out Swedish was moving into Redmond, to capture the plateau business, they (and the city) rushed to expand their new Evergreen Primary Care Medical Clinic in Redmond with a $15,000,000 free-standing ER.   (Patients needing the Redmond ER longer than 24 hours are required to go to the hospital.) 

Did we forget?  Evergreen Hospital has a new state-of-the-art Hospital ER a few miles away.  It has 4 trauma rooms and 28 private acute treatment rooms and are all equipped with full cardiac monitoring.  This hospital emergency department has it's own cardiac cath lab with 28% faster treatment for 'heart attacks' than the national average and it's only 4 miles away from Redmond.  Why go to a stand-alone facility (especially when you have chest pain) when vacant high tech acute rooms with hospital back-up are waiting for you?

By Bob Yoder
Ref:  Public Record Requests,
2010 Budget Hearing
Attendence at Commision Meetings
Physician and staff interviews