Council Asked To Warn Residents About New Emergency Facility’s Lack Of Acute Care Services
The current "free-standing emergency room," with the old full-service Emergency Department's "big red sign that says 'Emergency,'" but does not have the capacity to treat life-threatening emergencies.
At last Monday’s City Council meeting (April 4, 2016), Lakewood resident Kevin Young urged council members to alert every citizen in Lakewood to the fact that Cleveland Clinic’s new emergency facility in Lakewood is not equipped to treat serious, life-threatening emergencies.
Because the new facility recently opened in the exact location of what was once the old Lakewood Hospital’s full-service Emergency Department, which is still attached to the now-closed hospital, there is a real danger that those experiencing a life-threatening emergency will go to the old location, expecting the same level of service that was available when Lakewood Hospital was open, Young explained.
He quoted a USA Today article, according to which a majority of people who show up at Emergency Departments with heart attacks either drive themselves or have somebody drive them there. Residents in Lakewood are used to having a nearby full-service Emergency Department--where one can drive in less time than it would take to call and wait for an ambulance-- and many, he said, when faced with a critical situation, will take their loved ones to the local Emergency Department as they always have, not knowing until it’s too late and they’ve wasted precious time, that they have come to the wrong place.
He pointed out that the sign on the new facility is the same sign as the one used by the old full-service Emergency Department. There is no way to tell that acute care is no longer being offered in the same building under the same sign:
“People in the desperate throes of a heart attack,” Young said, “are looking for an immediate lifeline, and to an overwhelming number of people, that means getting to a building that has a big red sign that says ‘Emergency.’”
Young stressed that the delay a critically ill or injured person will experience while waiting at the new facility for transport to a full-service Emergency Deparment could make the difference between whether or not they survive.
He said, “Before another person makes the tragic mistake of driving themselves to our new ‘free standing emergency room,’ I urge this City Council to approve a direct mail piece to go to every resident in this town that clearly states what the Cleveland Clinic website states: “If you are having a heart attack, a stroke or other serious life threatening problems, get to a full service emergency room (and by that they mean "emergency department") that is attached to a full-service hospital.”
Young concluded, singling out council members Cindy Marx, David Anderson and Dan O’Malley, saying, “One of you could initiate this and let everybody know what’s going on. This is your time to be a hero.”
Council has, thus far, declined to act upon Mr. Young’s suggestion.