PORT ANGELES — Olympic Medical Center will open a Rapid Treatment Unit on Jan. 6 to provide timely care for people with minor illnesses and injuries who otherwise might wait for hours.
The pilot service will be part of the emergency room of the hospital at 939 Caroline St. and operate for at least three months, when CEO Eric Lewis said it will be evaluated.
The hope is that a patient with, say, a sore throat can see a doctor, physician’s assistant or nurse practitioner inside of an hour instead of having to wait as long as five hours while people with more serious ailments get treatment.
The RTU will be open from noon to midnight daily for what Lewis called “lower-acuity patients.”
The goal is to improve patient satisfaction, he said, and cut in half the number of patients who give up and go home because of long holdups in the ER waiting room.
Funds will come from payments from such people and those who otherwise might not seek medical aid at all.
As with all OMC services, it will be open to Medicare, Medicaid and Tricare clients.
Reduce the wait
“It will keep our emergency department wait-times significantly down,” Lewis told hospital district commissioners, who met Wednesday.
“If it makes sense, we’ll continue for the rest of the year.”
Although the new unit will operate within the emergency department, “there’ll be separate staffing, additional staffing,” Lewis added.
ER construction
Meanwhile, construction to improve the emergency department is lagging about a month behind schedule, with expected completion delayed from the end of March to the end of April.
The ER is being expanded from 14 beds to 20, with new secure rooms for mental health and drug- and alcohol-addicted patients.
Part of OMC’s lobbying effort to the state Legislature this year will be for more outpatient services for behavioral health cases, Lewis said.
The demand for treatment has increased greatly thanks to previously uninsured people being covered by the Affordable Care Act, he said.
New flooring
In another hospital enhancement, new flooring on the second-floor west wing will cost about $78,000 in materials and an estimated $65,000 for installation.
Hard rubber will replace present carpeting in the wing, improving infection control as well as appearance, said Dr. Scott Kennedy, chief medical officer.
The project will take two months to complete, with two rooms done at a time, lasting four days for each section, he said.
As for OMC’s other planned project, a two-story medical office building across Caroline Street from the hospital, a preliminary design is nearing completion, Lewis said.
“We’re deciding whether to have one or two X-ray units,” he said, adding that doctors who plan to occupy the building prefer two units while he wants only one, at least at the outset.
“We’re looking at demand,” he said. “Certainly, we’re going to plan for two; the question is when we’re going to have two.”
In the meantime, about 2,500 square feet of space has been added to the preliminary plan, he said.
Other changes include tearing down more old buildings on the site and vacating an alley that runs through it.
Neighborhood rezoning
Medical center officials plan to meet soon with City Manager Dan McKeen and Nathan West, city economic development director, about a “campus overlay” to grant medical zoning for the land OMC owns on both sides of Caroline Street near the hospital.
Some of the property currently has residential zoning.
Lewis said he would report on the matter to commissioners at their next meeting at 12:30 p.m. Jan. 7 in Linkletter Hall in the basement of the hospital.
The 37,000-square-foot, $15 million office structure is being designed to meet demand two decades from now, although “we’re looking at a 30-year horizon for this building,” Lewis said, “and it will probably be here for the next 50 years.”
Construction is expected to start this summer, Lewis told OMC commissioners last month.
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Reporter James Casey can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jcasey@peninsuladailynews.com
