JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Freestanding emergency rooms are meeting a significant need for people to have easier access to medical care, especially in the case of an emergency.
“We are providing care and patients’ backyards,” said Dr. Shilpa Amin, who is the chief of emergency medicine at HCA Florida Memorial Hospital. “These are the same doctors who work at the main hospitals. They also work at the freestanding hospitals.”
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There are at least 20 free-standing emergency rooms in northeast Florida.
“We can take care of stroke patients,” Amin said. “If you’re having a heart attack, if you are having sepsis, any trauma, [we can help you]. We can deliver babies.”
These emergency rooms get people help faster, especially if they live far away from a main hospital.
One in Arlington just opened in January.
Another one opened in St. Augustine in February.
“If somebody has sepsis, every minute counts,” Dr. Amin said. “We want them to be able to get care immediately. If somebody’s having a heart attack, we do not want them to have to drive another 15 minutes to get to a main hospital. We are literally saving lives and critical moments at these free-standing ERs. If there is something that requires true intervention, like you are having a migraine headache, and you need IV fluid or if you are having chest pain, you are having a stroke, you need to come to the emergency room.”
Amin says a free-standing emergency room is equipped to handle all of that.
She showed one room called a negative pressure room.
“In this room, we put specific patients that have illnesses that could be very, very viral or get other patients sick in the hospital,” Amin said. “The air that is in this room has a special process where it goes straight out of the building so that it is not recirculated at all to other patients. Through ventilation, the air gets sucked out and then just moves out of the hospital.”
Amin said people can get the same care at freestanding emergency rooms that they can get at a main hospital.