The new 24-hour emergency room in downtown Valparaiso is proving to be the right prescription for meeting health needs in the city.
A little more than three months in business, Porter Health Care System’s 24-hour emergency room at Valparaiso Medical Center is drawing more patients than health care officials expected.
“I worked the very first day the emergency department opened and we saw roughly 12 patients, and we’re up to an average of 30 patients a day, so it’s exceeding expectations,” said Michael Woods, medical director for Porter’s emergency department and chief of emergency medicine.
Patients have even arrived by city bus, from the V-Line stop at the corner of Glendale Boulevard and Roosevelt Road near the emergency room. They’ve come in from the nearby and newly refurbished ValPlayso park. They’ve also shown up in police cars and ambulances.
The stand-alone ER, which opened Oct. 14, upped the total of emergency rooms in Porter’s system to three, with one at its main campus in Liberty Township, at Indiana 49 and U.S. 6., and another at Portage Hospital on Willowcreek Road.
Hospital officials knew Valparaiso residents felt a void when the main campus, Porter Regional Hospital, moved from LaPorte Avenue to Liberty Township in August 2012, Woods said. During an open house before the Valparaiso ER opened, several people said they would use the facility because it was closer than the one in Liberty Township.
“It really goes to show people’s perception of distance,” Woods said.
The first day the ER was open, a family brought in a child who fell while playing at ValPlayso and saw the facility nearby, Woods said. Its first patient traveled there on the city’s bus service.
“I hadn’t thought of it, but some people don’t have cars,” Woods said.
Though most of the inmates at the Porter County Jail go directly to the main campus for medical needs, police officers bring people to the ER for medical clearance and toxicology screens.
“That makes it convenient for the officers,” Woods said. “They don’t have to leave the city borders, or they can stay close to their territory.”
The new ER is “a huge convenience” for law enforcement officers, particularly if they have a suspect from the southern part of the county, said Sgt. Jamie Erow, public information officer with the Porter County Sheriff’s Department.
Hospital officials are “pleasantly surprised” by the amount of traffic the new ER has generated, said Deb Shepherd, the health care center’s ER director.
“We’ve had quite a few sick people come through here too, which is what we wanted,” she said.
Patients have included two people who were suffering heart attacks. After lab work at the ER, Porter EMS transferred the patients to the main campus for further treatment, she said.
“It’s kind of exceeded my expectations, because I didn’t know who would show up there,” she said.
Officials wondered if the new facility would take patients away from its other locations. There was an obvious drop-off initially at the main campus, and while it’s too early to determine the long-term impact, the new ER seems to be taking some volume away from the Liberty Township location, which Shepherd said is OK, because it takes some pressure off the ER there.
Shepherd hopes patient volume picks up at all three emergency rooms in the Porter system if people need care.
“I always saw there was a void,” Woods said, adding Mondays traditionally are busy at the ER and weekends bring in a wide array of casualties, including “weekend warriors” who overdo it with sports or other strenuous activities.
“That facility is a success, to say the least, and we’re getting consistent numbers.”
Amy Lavalley is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
