EVERETT — Options for health care services in south Snohomish County expanded dramatically Feb. 17 with the opening of Swedish Health Services new $30 million, three-story emergency care center, built on the site of the former Puget Park Drive-In Theater at 128th Street SW and I-5.
More than 3,000 visitors toured the centers open house Feb. 12 to see treatment rooms, medical labs and the facilitys high-tech diagnostic equipment, including X-ray, MRI and CT scanners.
The new Swedish/Mill Creek facility is equipped to treat patients for such things as severe lacerations, burns, broken bones, sports injuries, allergic reactions, food poisoning, work-related injuries and other medical emergencies.
Swedish officials estimate the emergency and outpatient center will see more than 35,000 patient visits each year.
“We built it here because our market studies showed that an emergency facility at this location would reach a large, underserved area,” said Dr. John Milne, the Swedish vice president for medical affairs who oversees Mill Creek and two similar Swedish centers in Issaquah and Redmond. “The location is about equidistant from Providence Hospital to the north in Everett and Swedish/Edmonds (formerly known as Stevens Hospital) to the south.”
He said Swedish wanted to locate the emergency center in an area where people with traumas or urgent medical conditions could get help without driving so far to get diagnosis and treatment.
Not only will emergency treatment facilities be closer but services also will be faster once patients arrive, he said, noting that the facility doesn’t have the traditional waiting room people are used to at emergency departments.
Industry-wide, the trend in medical facilities is to solve the problem of long waiting times in large rooms with other patients and in-and-out times of three or four hours by taking patients and their families immediately to an examination and treatment room for medical care, he said.
“Our goal is to get patients in and out in an average of 90 minutes rather than the four hours or more that surveys tell us is common today in emergency rooms,” Milne said. “That’s why each examination room is equipped with diagnostic equipment, including ultrasound scans, that can provide diagnostic services without sending the patient to a separate department for more waiting,” he said.
Providence Regional Medical Center Everett will offer a similar emergency department treatment procedure when the facility opens in June as part of a $460 million development that includes a new 12-story hospital and a new emergency facility designed to greatly traditional reduce waiting, diagnostic and treatment times.
Swedish/Mill Creek ER and Outpatient Center offers improved emergency care procedures that first proved successful when its first stand-alone facility was opened in Issaquah in 2005. A second facility based on the same layout and services opened last December in Redmond.
Construction of the Mill Creek clinic involved some 200 workers. Now that its open, more than 100 medical workers have moved into the facility, a number that will increase as the center develops. In addition to emergency care the facility also provides outpatient services for physical therapy, cardiac diagnostic care and related needs.
Soon, the mostly empty third-floor, which is open for leasing, will begin filling with physicians and specialty treatment centers to serve area patients who don’t need the 24-hour emergency care offered there, Milne said, making the 55,000-square-foot Mill Creek center a multifaceted medical facility.
Patients using Swedish facilities in Mill Creek and Edmonds will also have access to a wide range of specialty care in Swedish’s King County network, including its three hospital campuses, on First Hill and Cherry Hill in Seattle and in Ballard.
On the Web
For more information, go to www.swedish.org.
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