After decades of having two emergency rooms in Everett, soon there will only be only one.
The emergency room located at 916 Pacific Ave. is scheduled to close at 5 a.m. June 16, two days after Providence Regional Medical Center Everett opens its $460 million medical tower.
The hospital’s new 67,460-square-foot emergency department will be located on its ground floor.
Emergency dispatchers will automatically direct ambulances and paramedic rigs to the new address — 1700 13th St.
But hospital staff and administrators say they’re concerned that some of the tens of thousands people who come to the Pacific Avenue emergency room on their own each year won’t get the message.
Nearly 50,000 people were treated at the Pacific Avenue emergency room last year. Almost 90 percent either drove themselves or had someone drive them there.
The remaining 61,000 patients were treated at the current Colby campus emergency room, which will close June 14 with the opening of the new emergency room in the medical tower. Overall, the hospital’s emergency rooms treated nearly 111,000 people last year.
For the first week after the closure of the Pacific Avenue emergency room, the hospital will have a private ambulance parked out front. Crews will hand out maps to direct people to the new emergency room, said Preston Simmons, the hospital’s chief operating officer.
If anyone shows up there with a potentially life-threatening medical problem, such as chest pain, the ambulance will take them to the hospital’s new emergency room, he said.
The hospital will soon launch a campaign to remind people that the emergency room on Pacific Avenue, which has been in existence for nearly 70 years, is closing.
“You can’t tell people enough,” said hospital spokeswoman Cheri Russum. “In a time of stress, it’s easy to forget.”
Although the emergency room is closing, many services will continue to be offered at the Pacific campus. They include the Pavilion for Women and Children, the five-story $56 million building that opened in May 2002. About 4,000 infants were born there last year.
Children’s programs, mammography and procedures conducted with the help of robotic surgical devices will all continue to be based at the Pacific campus.
The hospital’s two emergency rooms are in part a holdover from the merger of what were once the city’s two separate hospitals.
Providence Hospital and General Hospital Medical Center, each with its own emergency room, merged in March 1994.
Nevertheless, in 1996, the hospital decided to keep the emergency room at its Pacific campus open, said Dr. Cynthia Markus, who has worked in the hospital’s emergency department since 1975.
Even though the Colby Campus emergency room had been expanded, “We didn’t have the capacity to handle the full volume of patients,” she said.
So the Pacific Avenue emergency room remained open, sometimes handling the overflow of patients when the Colby emergency department is at capacity.
Like Markus, Dr. Peter Millikan began working in Everett’s two emergency rooms in 1975.
When he first joined the emergency room staff, doctors worked 24-hour shifts, treating 15 to 20 patients. On peak days, that’s the number he now sees in a single eight-hour shift. The mid-1970s pacing was relaxed enough that physicians had time to take breakfast and lunch breaks and even get in some nap time, he said. His son, 33-year-old Dr. Daniel Millikan began working in Everett’s emergency rooms in October, sometimes on the same shifts as his father.
“There’s collaboration,” he said.
One recent weekday, both were working at the Pacific Avenue emergency room. “I don’t have as much attachment to the old place as people who have been working here 35 years,” he said.
Nurse Debbie Greaves, a 24-year veteran, said she does feel some nostalgia over its pending closure. “It’s sad to see this close, but, you know, it’s a whole new era,” she said.
Both current emergency rooms are often brimming with patients, she said. “Having patients in the hallways is not what we like to do, but it happens every day.”
At the Pacific Avenue emergency room, there are 13 treatment rooms. But with some rooms having three beds and numbered chairs and beds in the hallways, there’s room for up to 31 patients.
Greaves said she looks forward to working in the spacious new emergency room that will open in June, which will have 79 private treatment rooms.
“I’m excited,” she said.
Sharon Salyer: 425-339-3486 or salyer@heraldnet.com
What stays
Services that will remain at Providence Regional Medical Center’s Pacific Avenue campus: Pavilion for Women and Children including maternity services and the neonatal intensive care unit; Seattle Children’s specialist clinic; inpatient rehabilitation unit; chemical dependency unit; sleep disorders unit; surgery pre-assessment clinic; seven operating rooms, including those where robotic surgery is used; inpatient imaging; laboratory services; the Comprehensive Breast Center, where patients get mammograms
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
