No one plans to have an emergency room visit. For urban dwellers, accessing an ER can be taken for granted. When you live in more rural areas, it can become a major concern. There is travel time and extensive disruptions to family schedules to care for a loved one who is receiving care at a hospital located far from home.

In a strategic partnership with Emerus, Allegheny Health Network is disrupting the existing health care model for emergency care with construction of four neighborhood hospitals. These “micro-hospitals” are bringing convenience, efficiency, cost-savings and high-quality care close to your home.

A neighborhood hospital brings emergency care to the neighborhood in a small-scale, accessible facility. Traditional, large hospitals manage a complex array of procedures and conditions, whereas neighborhood hospitals are entirely dedicated to emergency care.

AHN’s four neighborhood hospitals have eight to 10 emergency room beds and 10 in-patient beds for those who need follow-up care and monitoring.

Emergency care is supported with labs and testing capabilities (e.g., lab services, blood cell counts, EKG and cardiac enzyme analysis, liver panel, metabolic profiles, pregnancy tests and urinalysis). Other services include adult and pediatric advanced cardiac life support, imaging services, and EKG and thrombolytic therapy to treat heart attacks.

Patient-Centered Partnership

To comprehend just how valuable having access to an AHN Neighborhood Hospital is to you, it’s helpful to know a little bit about why AHN partnered with Emerus. Based in Texas, Emerus is the nation’s leading developer of neighborhood hospitals and the expansion partner of choice for many health networks.

“We wanted to keep care local in the communities and provide appropriate levels of emergency care,” says David Hall, vice president of enterprise partnerships with Highmark Health, the parent organization to AHN. “We have experience with the urgent care format. That wasn’t solving our needs. We wanted a higher standard of care that we could control. We wanted physician-level oriented emergency medicine.”

What drew AHN to Emerus was the fact Emerus had never put a free-standing emergency room into practice. One key aspect of the business model was a collaborative partnership with existing health care systems. This was done to ensure patients can trust the services they’re receiving, the level of care meets AHN standards, and that communication between the micro-hospital and the patient’s primary care physician are seamless.

Emerus has earned the Guardian of Excellence Award for five years, the highest stamp of approval a hospital can receive. Think of it as the Academy Award in the category of delivering an excellent patient experience.

Many Benefits

Emergency rooms can make a person feel vulnerable, so AHN neighborhood hospitals make sure patients are approach and acknowledged. Triage is necessary, but wait times are typically shorter than a large hospital ER.

The reason for this increased efficiency and higher level of patient satisfaction is that neighborhood hospitals aren’t part of a large, sprawling facility and have a smaller footprint. Parking lots are smaller and adjacent to the facility and there is no need for a parking garage.

Room layout is identical across each neighborhood hospital. This enables health care professionals to serve patients with reorienting themselves to a new space or rearranging hoses and equipment.

Eliminating these steps leads to higher efficiency. Test results come back more quickly, meaning diagnosis can be made and treatments begin comparatively sooner. Reducing wait time translates into less time in the hospital, and this saves money on hospital stays and reduces the risk of secondary infections.

Finding Your Hospital

AHN opened a neighborhood hospital in Hempfield in February, and will be opening facilities in Brentwood, McCandless and Harmar.

Each facility offers a unique array of services in the form of complementary, stand-alone medical and physician office complexes, and offers premium health care services for residents of Allegheny County and adjacent regions.

“ANH designed custom medical complexes for ancillary clinical services adjacent to the Neighborhood Hospital based on what these communities lacked,” Hall says. “Hempfield has a cancer center, and McCandless specializes in women’s health and primary care.”