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StumbleuponDoctors, urgent care join to keep patients out of emergency rooms
Thursday, July 17, 2008
DAYTON — Miami Valley Cardiologists and Hometown Urgent Care will collaborate to keep urgent-care patients with heart conditions out of crowded hospital emergency rooms when what they really need is doctor appointments within a day or two.
The cardiologists practice will provide training and screening tools to help Hometown physicians determine whether or not their heart patients' conditions are emergencies, and Hometown will provide office space for the heart specialists at its Dayton Mall and Troy locations. Hometown also is at Springboro, Xenia, Huber Heights and 1010 Woodman Drive in Dayton.
The new partners are targeting the business of what they estimate is 70 percent of ER heart patients who do not have life-threatening heart conditions.
"Our patients will benefit by receiving specialized consultation and easy accessibility to cardiac screening procedures," said Hometown's medical director, Dr. James Bean, "as well as heart-disease prevention and education materials."
Heart patients' average waiting time in ERs increased by 150 percent nationally from just 1999 to 2003, Harvard Medical School researchers reported in January. The average wait in Ohio ERs for all patients is three minutes shy of four hours. Locally, Miami Valley Hospital has the state's busiest ER.
Crowded ERs not only delay medical care for patients who need it, but also expose the other patients to more likelihood of undergoing tests and procedures that several studies have shown they do not need.
Hometown expects more than 80,000 patient visits this year. For more info, call (937) 252-2000.
