Emergency care relief on the horizon: MultiCare Emergency Department Lacey

Debra L. Glasser, M.D.

PHOTO BY GLORIA TOWNE

MultiCare Emergency Lacey
4312 Pacific Ave SE
Lacey, WA 98503
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A JOLT OF HEALTH

Reflections on a trip to Olympia’s only trauma emergency department

Since beginning this series of columns on the immense challenges for emergency care in our community, I have learned a great deal. I have heard from many of you, community members as well as current and former healthcare professionals regarding the history and scope of these challenges. I have gratefully met with healthcare leaders of our hospitals (MultiCare Capital Medical Center and Providence St. Peter).  I experienced how emergency care was provided in a community hospital north of us that seemed less chaotic and better staffed than those locally - more on that soon.  

Surprisingly, it turns out that providing emergency care is not just about providing the care. Emergency care has been impacted by societal and healthcare changes over the last 25 years that are complex (see below). Accessible and sustainable solutions have been elusive. The fallout of these issues resulted in the ED =Emergency Department experience my son had a few months ago, much like ones many readers have shared and experienced.

We, who all need healthcare and at times, emergency care, deserve to know and understand what is going on even if it is not simple.

I believe that transparency builds trust, that an informed public is foundational for democracy, and that investigative journalism has an important role in this process. Knowing the truth can motivate action.  

We need all the potential players to help improve and restore the mess that our healthcare system is in.  We will need government leaders with the facts and vision to institute policy change and legislation. We will need multiple interventions from a variety of sources to find ways to deal with poverty, addiction, and mental health, as well as long-term care for the elderly and most vulnerable in our society.  We will need healthcare organizations to prioritize patients first and support those caring for the patients.

I also believe there can be a role for the public, the healthcare consumer, though our current leverage to change things in healthcare is small. When things improve, it will be obvious. We will see evidence on the sides of our roadways, in our beautiful downtown, in the care our families receive, availability of long-term term care for our most vulnerable citizens, and in the Emergency Department waiting rooms.

But this column is about GOOD NEWS! A relief valve for emergency care in our county is expected Friday morning. (If additional glitches happen expect it very soon)

MultiCare Emergency Lacey is slated to open Friday, December 15^th at 0730 at 4312 Pacific Avenue SE 98503

Front staff getting ready to help in the morning

This brand new state-of-the-art full-service emergency room has ten beds, including one specifically designated for pediatrics (children) and one for safety in a mental health emergency. It has an on-site lab, X-ray, ultrasound, and CT scan. It will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and 365 days a year. Professional staffing will include RNs, NPs, and board-certified emergency physicians (always including one trained in pediatrics and more). Our locally owned Olympia Emergency Physicians will provide the doctors.  

This new ED is committed to a maximum wait time of 15 minutes from the front desk to being triaged by a doctor or mid-level provider. The overall length of stay goal is under two and a half hours. It will accept most major insurance and have ample free parking in central mid-town Lacey.  The facility will provide 100 new jobs and can care for up to 100 patients in 24 hours.

C.T. machine at the new ER. Image from the ribbon-cutting event for the new MultiCare Emergency Hospital in Lacey, Washington, taken on Tuesday, Dec. …

Part of the welcoming pediatric room at the new ER. Image from the ribbon-cutting event for the new MultiCare Emergency Hospital in Lacey, …

Image from the ribbon-cutting event for the new MultiCare Emergency Hospital in Lacey, Washington, taken on Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2023.

You may go there with almost any emergency, from head injuries to broken bones to asthma to infections of all kinds, cuts and sprains, joint dislocations, allergic reactions, abdominal and chest pain, and more.

This emergency care facility is considered an ‘off-campus’ emergency department because it is not on the campus or attached to a hospital. If the staff cannot fully care for the health problem, they are prepared to transfer patients for the necessary care to the nearest hospital. Their first-line referral hospital will be MultiCare Capital Medical Center. If the level of care or expertise is not available there, the referral and transfer will be to the appropriate hospital with the needed resources locally or farther north if necessary.

Let it be noted that this is MultiCare’s fifth emergency facility of its kind in Puget Sound. They have opened three in Pierce and one in King County within the last four years. These were manifest through a partnership arrangement between MultiCare and Emerus, a national company whose expertise is building, opening, and guiding the running of such off-campus E.Ds.  Emerus has developed a model for emergency care that is designed to be delivered with equal depth and expertise but with much shorter wait times than are typical in a hospital ED.   

My dear 83-year-old neighbor walked into Providence St. Peter’s ED a few weeks ago, when to her surprise, there was no other patient in the waiting room! She was offered excellent and expeditious care.  Unfortunately, that kind of ‘luck’ (i.e. no wait time) is not business as usual in our busiest local ED.

Part of the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new MultiCare Emergency Hospital in Lacey, Washington, taken on Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2023.

Last week the Thurston County Chamber of Commerce held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new ED. Attendees heard from leaders of MultiCare, the mayor of Lacey, and the Tacoma Market CEO of Emerus, Renee Espinosa, RN. She and I had time to meet individually after the ribbon cutting. Our meeting gave me even more hope about having scored this ED in our community. I am delighted that Emerus sought out Renee for this job.  She brings decades of nursing and clinical expertise from a large Tacoma hospital critical care and emergency departments (as well as experience in that hospital system’s leadership) to the table. As a healthcare leader and nurse, she ‘gets’ what it takes to provide emergency medical care. In her short time with Emerus, she has witnessed this successful model in action at the four other off-campus EDs in the Tacoma environs.  Meeting Renee gave me faith in this Texas company in being able to partner to provide a viable solution for our county.  

Will this new MultiCare Lacey ED solve the overwhelm in our hospital EDs? YES, it will…in part.

This facility will offer a much-needed ‘relief valve’ for the pressure in our hospital emergency rooms. It will see many patients that need emergency care but not necessarily hospitalization. It will offer an alternative to the chaotic over-run waiting rooms and long wait times we are too familiar with.

What it won’t solve

• It will not solve the bed shortage in the hospitals, a complex topic in itself, that majorly impacts ED services.
• It will not solve or address poverty, addiction, and mental health crises that overwhelm the hospital EDs due to societal lack of resources outside of the hospital.
• It will not solve the shortage of healthcare staff.
• It will not solve a broken mental health system when mental health (now called behavioral health – why is that??) is as much a part of healthcare as physical health but has been treated like a rejected stepchild.
• It will not solve the short-sightedness that the baby boomers are now seniors needing healthcare resources AND retiring from those fields.

Of course, one facility cannot be expected to solve the mass of societal and healthcare woes that ultimately impact health.  That said, this new ED is going to help, A LOT I predict.

We should celebrate this new high-level facility in our community which will serve a seriously underserved need for emergency care.

Kudos and gratitude to MultiCare’s investment, vision, and commitment to us in the South Sound!

Best wishes for good health and happiness to all my readers for this holiday season and the coming year with hopes you will not need this ED and yet feel some ease knowing it will be there when and if you do.

Debra L. Glasser, M.D., is a retired internal medicine physician in Olympia. Got a question for her? Write drdebra@theJOLTnews.com