No one wants to go to an emergency room unless, of course, it’s an emergency. Most people never think about an emergency room until they have to go to one. But concerns raised on Tuesday by the Lynn Fire Department’s spokesman about the new emergency room being built on the Salem Hospital campus should alarm all Lynn residents.
Capt. Joseph Zukas said the new Salem emergency room cannot handle the combined number of patients currently being seen in the Union Hospital and Salem Hospital emergency rooms.
“I definitely think it’s going to impact the citizens in a negative way,” said Zukas.
He buttressed this statement with statistics chronicling an increase in ambulance runs from Lynn to Salem Hospital. With Union’s operating rooms closing last spring, the number of runs increased from 63 percent of ambulance runs originating in Lynn going to Salem in 2018 to 79 percent last month.
He noted that Salem’s new emergency room will see Salem and Lynn patients as well as Lynnfield and Saugus patients.
Salem Hospital’s parent company, North Shore Medical Center (NSMC), insists the new emergency room will be able to handle patient demand.
“It was planned to accommodate the demand we expect and that’s still true,” said hospital spokeswoman Laura Fleming.
On paper, at least, it sounds like Fleming is right. The new Salem emergency room will have 65 beds compared to 51 in the emergency department now operating in the hospital. There will be beds reserved for children and others reserved for patients with behavioral health emergencies.
Salem Hospital and its parent company are also looking for ways to reduce patient visits to the new Salem emergency room through an education program that Fleming described as “robust.”
Zukas said the program in part involves instructing people about how and when to use urgent care services and their primary care doctors. The new medical village scheduled to open next May on the Union Hospital site will not have an emergency room. But it will have urgent care services. Lynn Community Health Center also has urgent care services downtown.
Fleming stressed that the education program is only one component of the new emergency room’s operation. But Zukas said centering area emergency room services in Salem raises concerns about increased travel time for the five ambulances serving Lynn and increased vehicle wear and tear.
Interestingly, Zukas and Fleming both used the word “adequate” in separate Daily Item interviews, to describe the level of emergency services available for Lynn residents and residents in other communities served by NSMC once the new Salem emergency room is in full operational mode.
“Excellent” would probably be the word Lynn residents would prefer to hear.
