SAN ANTONIO -- San Antonio is now home to a new concept in medical care: the neighborhood emergency hospital.
You might consider this a health care facility in a niche between a full-service hospital and an urgent care clinic. The idea is to make emergency care convenient and fast.
In a growing city like San Antonio, there are more and more patients who need to see a doctor ‘stat.” Unfortunately, that can take loads of time.
“Your wait time in the large hospital ER may be up to four hours or greater,” said Baptist Emergency Hospital CEO Adolfo Carrasco. “And in this model, you’re able to be seen within about a 15 minute period.”
The new emergency hospital at 281 and Thousand Oaks in the old SAS shoe store is 40,000 square feet of equipment and personnel dedicated to all things emergency.
Veteran doctors like Bob Kottman like the concept of walk-in, immediate care. The new hospital sees just sick and injured people, no trauma cases.
“But if you come in here with your chest pain, you think you may be having a stroke, having problems with diabetes or high blood pressure, a child with fever, anything like that would e entirely appropriate for this place,” Kottman explained. “Most things we can handle right here.”
The new emergency hospital has its own lab and pharmacy, with CT, x-ray and sonogram imaging. There is also an inpatient wing where people can stay the night if they need to.
Anyone can use the service. All insurance is accepted.
Unlike the corner urgent care center, this place sees patients around the clock.
“We’ll be open 24 hours, seven days out of the week, and 365 days out of the year,” Carrasco stressed.
This is the first of five Baptist Emergency Hospitals. Four more in the west, north and northeast will open by the end of 2012.
