FORT COLLINS, Colo. – UCHealth is breaking ground this week on a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week emergency center in southeastern Fort Collins to serve patients in this rapidly growing area.
Kevin Unger, president and CEO of UCHealth’s Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins and Medical Center of the Rockies in Loveland, said the $12.3-million center is expected to be completed in late summer.
The 17,400-square-foot emergency center, which will be named UCHealth ER, will offer easy access and comfort with short waiting times, efficiency of service and high quality care.
The emergency center will have 12 private exam rooms and advanced CT imaging, ultrasound and basic X-ray services. The facility also will house an outpatient laboratory and retail pharmacy, both of which will be open 24/7, the first in this area of the city.
Plans include private space and equipment for conducting specialized examinations for victims of sexual assault. This will be the second northern Colorado site for UCHealth’s Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner program, which has nurses specially trained to care for rape victims and collect forensic evidence. The other site is at MCR.
The new UCHealth ER in Fort Collins will be staffed by nurses and advanced care practitioners with specialized emergency medicine training; pharmacists; imaging experts; laboratory scientists; and board-certified ER doctors from Emergency Physicians of the Rockies, an independent group that has served northern Colorado for 30 years and provides ER physicians for PVH, MCR and Greeley Emergency and Surgery Center.
The facility will care for walk-in patients and those brought by ambulance. The staff will be able to handle any type of medical emergency. Patients who need highly specialized care, such as major trauma injuries or cardiac or stroke conditions, will have treatment started immediately and be transported directly to the closest appropriate hospital, according to Dr. James Campain, who is medical director of UCHealth’s emergency center in west Greeley and who will also be the medical director of the new UCHealth ER on Harmony Road. Patients with lesser ailments—colds and minor abrasions, for example—will still be able to receive care at UCHealth Urgent Care on the Harmony Campus. The urgent care center, located about two blocks west of the site for the new emergency center, is open seven days a week.
In addition, UCHealth laboratory services now located in the Redstone Building on Harmony Campus will be moved to UCHealth ER, where 24/7 outpatient lab services will be offered to serve patients’ health care needs and accommodate their busy schedules.
A single-story building south of Harmony Road and east of Snow Mesa Drive will house the emergency facility on UCHealth’s 96-acre campus. The project architect is H+L, and the contractor is GE Johnson.
Meanwhile, UCHealth is also preparing for an expansion project on Poudre Valley Hospital’s main campus about five miles northwest of the Harmony Campus.
The hospital has seen a huge increase in the volume of emergency care patients over the years. PVH’s emergency department was enlarged in the early 2000s to meet the growing need for emergency services, but quickly became busier than expected, caring for more than 55,000 patients in fiscal year 2014 alone. The planned project involves the demolition of the hospital’s original section in May, and building of a two-story addition that will feature an expanded emergency services department as well as new space for the orthopedics unit, lab services and other support services.
AT A GLANCE
WHAT: New UCHealth ER.
WHERE: South of Harmony Road and east of Snow Mesa Drive on University of Colorado Health’s Harmony Campus.
BENEFITS: Easy access, convenience, short waiting times, high quality care.
COST: $12.3 million.
SIZE: Approximately 17,400 square feet.
FEATURES:
- 12 private exam rooms.
- Diagnostic imaging.
- Laboratory, 24/7.
- Retail pharmacy, 24/7.
- Space and equipment to conduct Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner exams.
- Covered ambulance bay.
COMPLETION: Late summer.