Another Level of Care

from Prairie Business July 2016

On a Threshold -

Sioux Falls, S.D.-based Avera Health prepares to open $25 million free-standing emergency department in underserved area

BY KAYLA PRASEK

This fall, Avera Health will open the first free-standing emergency department in the state of South Dakota. The Avera Emergency & Family Health Center, located west of Interstate 29 in Sioux Falls, also will include a variety of other services, while providing more convenience for residents in that area of the community.

The 72,000-square-foot, $25 million facility broke ground in September 2015 and is expected to open in October. It was designed by Sioux Falls-based architecture firm Perspective, while Sioux Falls Construction is serving as construction manager.

“We chose to build this facility west of I-29 because it’s a very underserved area (in terms of emergency health facilities),” says Mark Vortherms, vice president of primary care for Avera McKennan Hospital and University Health Center in Sioux Falls. “That part of the city doesn’t have a good cross street to get to either hospital, so that was our reasoning for putting an emergency department over there.”

Vortherms says the health care system saw a population it could serve in that location, while the physicians at Avera Medical Group McGreevy, which has a clinic near where the Emergency & Family Health Center is being built, saw an opportunity to grow the market

ABOVE: Construction is expected to be finished on the Avera Emergency & Family Health Center near Sioux Falls, S. D., in October.

ABOVE RIGHT: The center will feature South Dakota's first free-standing emergency department, as shown in this rendering.

IMAGES: AVERA HEALTH share. “Our goal is to meet all the needs of the community while adding to our growing needs as a health care system,” Vortherms says.

The emergency department, which will be staffed by emergency-trained physicians, will feature a racetrack-style design and have eight rooms. With the design, patients enter from the exterior and an interior corridor provides physicians and nurses access to the rooms, while also keeping everything behind the scenes, which Vortherms says provides a “calming effect” for patients. Richard Molseed, executive vice president of strategy and governance for Avera Health, says the design, which is also featured at Avera McKennan, provides shorter wait times along with higher staff satisfaction and higher security.

Molseed says the emergency department’s layout is strategic. “The emergency department is an interesting place. You get everything from a little cut to someone dying. It’s high stress and very expensive to operate so you need to be as efficient as you can to avoid burnout and continue attracting staff.”

Other services on the first floor of the facility include X-ray, CT scans and laboratory, which will be shared between the clinic and emergency department; an occupational medicine program, which will provide workplace screenings and care for workplace injuries; urgent care; and optometry services. The second floor will house Avera Medical Group McGreevy family practice physicians and Avera Medical Group Pediatrics. The third floor will house OB-GYN services, including mammography and maternal-fetal ultrasounds. The clinic will feature a design similar to the emergency department to encourage the calming environment.

“The facility provides much closer emergency services, expands our acute care services and brings more services to that part of the city,” Vortherms says. “For the business community, it expands those services and gives the employer one location for all-hours workplace care.”

The decision to include a clinic alongside the emergency department comes from a shift system-wide, Molseed says. Avera has built several Family Health Centers, which combine family practice, obstetrics, pediatrics and internal medicine in one facility. “A single building provides primary care and specialties. Our hope is these become go-to centers, where you’ll get the appropriate level of care. We see these as community centers of health in our largest markets. This project takes it a step further with the emergency department.” PB

Kayla Prasek Staff Writer, Prairie Business 701.780.1187