In an effort to shorten wait times for patients at Providence Centralia Hospital’s Emergency Department, the hospital is partnering with Valley View Health Center’s Centralia Walk-In Clinic to expand services.
“Unfortunately, in the United States, a lot of people feel disenfranchised and can’t get into a doctor’s office maybe for insurance reasons or time schedule reasons or whatever,” said Dr. Stephen Hennessey, MD at Valley View Health Center Walk-In Clinic in Centralia. “A lot of people end up going to the emergency room for really routine health care.”
As part of a three-month pilot program, the clinic extended its hours in hopes that patients with minor issues would choose the clinic instead of the Emergency Department at Providence. The program started two months ago and has one month left. If the extended hours prove to alleviate stress on the ED, Valley View plans to expand the walk-in clinic, adding two more exam rooms.
“A dialogue was initiated several months ago between Providence and the Valley View Health Center to try to alleviate some of that congestion,” Hennessey said. “What came out of that conversation was Valley View’s willingness to open earlier.”
The clinic used to open at noon, but now opens at 9 a.m. on weekdays. It still closes at 10 p.m. On weekends it opens at noon and closes at 10 p.m. Hennessey said the clinic now sees around eight more patients each day.
“What we’re doing right now, is we’re in the middle of a pilot study,” Hennessey said. “We’re two months done in a three-month study to see if opening up earlier in the morning allows us to see more patients and it looks like it is. It looks like we’re alleviating some of that pressure in the emergency room.”
Crystal Billings, director of nursing excellence at Providence Health & Services, and who was the Emergency Department director until last week, said Valley View’s Walk-In Clinic was at capacity during its previously shorter operating hours.
“They were seeing as many patients as they could in the timeframe and the space that they had,” Billings said. “That’s when we really started exploring, ‘can we expand the hours?’ ‘can we expand the space?’ ‘Is there enough patient need for that?’”
So far, the program is proving that there is.
“The emergency room has an algorithm, a computer program, that you put in what the patient’s complaining about, what’s going on with them, how long they’ve been sick and it can assign a score from like one to five,” Hennessey said. “Like having a crushing major heart attack, that’s a one. I’ve got an inch-and-a-half-long cut on my finger that needs stitches, that’s a four. I’ve had a cold for three days and I’m kind of sniffly and not feeling good, that’s a five. We can do fours and fives beautifully (at Valley View). The emergency room was designed for ones, maybe some twos. But if you were having a massive heart attack or you were in a car wreck and you got your spleen fractured, you wouldn’t just kind of wander down to the doctor’s office in the waiting area and see if they could work you in or not in a couple hours. That’s why we have an emergency room.”
For the people who pay cash for their bill, Hennessey said the charges at Valley View are anywhere from 10 to 15 percent of what they would be for an ER visit. Hennessey also noted there are very few insurance plans the clinic doesn’t accept.
The ER also has signs advertising Express Care Virtual, which allows patients to talk with a provider remotely through a camera on their smartphone, tablet or computer. The visit costs $49.
“It gives the patient control over where they seek care,” Billings said. “You can sit on your couch with a cell phone and talk to a nurse practitioner. It makes it convenient.”
The Valley View clinic currently has five exam rooms, but Hennessey said the goal is to increase to seven. If the study goes well, there is another office suite next to the current one that is about half the size. Valley View would incorporate that space into their current one.
“Looking at the data, we are starting to get some gain,” Billings said.
Billings said fewer patients are leaving before being seen by a doctor, and wait times are getting shorter.
“And the fours and fives, those lower-acuity patients, we’re also seeing a trending down,” he said. “So (we’re) just making those initial assumptions that the fours and fives are going in the right direction, seeking the right care area.”
