Community Health & Wellness
Hybrid ER-urgent care opens in Port Orchard
Virginia Mason Franciscan Health announced Monday, Dec. 8 that it has started accepting patients at a hybrid emergency room-urgent care clinic in Port Orchard.
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VMFH hails the clinic at 450 South Kitsap Blvd., and a similar facility that opened in February in Bremerton, as the first of their kind in Washington. Virginia Mason Franciscan expects them to relieve pressure on the emergency rooms at St. Anthony Hospital in Gig Harbor and St. Michael Medical Center in Silverdale.
Nurses triage patients at the clinics into either the emergency department or urgent care based on their condition. Officials say this creates a no-wrong-door approach, eliminating guesswork for patients and reducing medical costs associated with low-acuity emergency room visits.
Virginia Mason Franciscan Health’s new hybrid urgent care and emergency room at the system’s campus on South Kitsap Boulevard in Port Orchard.
The emergency side of the Port Orchard facility is open around the clock and staffed by emergency-trained physicians and nurses. It includes an onsite lab, radiology suite, X-rays and a multi-slice CT scanner. The urgent care portion is open from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily.
Similar facility in Bremerton
The Bremerton hybrid clinic has served 15,000 patients since March, according to a press release. That has not completely resolved challenges at the St. Michael Medical Center but it has contributed to reduced wait times in its ER.
The two clinics came to Kitsap County through a partnership between VMFH and Intuitive Health, a Texas-based medical company that claims to have pioneered the dual ER-urgent care model. The company has built nearly 30 such facilities across the country, according to its website.
During the launch of the Bremerton clinic, Intuitive CEO Thom Herrmann said the model is “a better way to provide care.” Even those working in the medical field can have difficulty determining what constitutes an emergency, he said. The combined facility ensures patients receive the right care without unnecessary bills.
