Hospital will double ER size

Huntington Memorial Hospital is more than halfway done with an ambitious expansion of its emergency department as the center seeks to keep pace with rising demand for emergency room services.

The hospital’s current emergency and trauma center has 21 beds. The new center will add 22,000 square feet and host 50 beds.

The $80-million expansion was fueled by several factors that have increased activity at the Huntington emergency room.

The first came in 2002, when Pasadena’s St. Luke Medical Center closed, making Huntington the hub for 90% of all local 911 calls in the area.

“When St. Luke’s closed, our volume went up 10 to 20 percent,” Jeanette Abundis, executive director for emergency services at Huntington, said. “It’s one of the reasons for the expansion.”

Other factors include cutbacks to government-funded clinics and increased reliance on emergency rooms by uninsured and underinsured people who otherwise could not afford medical care.

Abundis said wait times at the ER can be long, especially during peak hours between 5 p.m. and 1 a.m. Some patients decide to leave before their names are called.

“We’re constantly shuffling and rotating patients because we have capacity issues,” Abundis said. “Then we have customer service issues.”

Visitors to the Huntington ER. often receive care in beds and chairs placed in the hallways of the emergency department, she said.

Expanding the ER. was just part of the hospital’s response to the growing demand. In 2010 the hospital, the Huntington Medical Foundation and the city of Pasadena joined forces to create the Pasadena Community Urgent Care Center on Del Mar Boulevard, with the intention of reducing reliance on the ER. for routine medical matters.

Asbasia Mikhail, chair of the emergency medical section at Huntington, said the hospital plans a partial opening of the new facilities in March, with about 30 beds. When the work is complete in 2013, Mikhail anticipates serving 100,000 patients a year, compared to the 65,000 the hospital currently sees.

“The goal is to treat every patient that walks in and capture all the people who are waiting and leave,” she said.

The new ER will be part of an 86,000-square-foot, four-story addition to the main hospital building that is funded almost entirely by 4,200 private donations.

Mikhail said it was “no surprise” that people wanted to improve the hospital.

“The community around Huntington looks at Huntington as their community hospital,” she said. “People feel like it’s their hospital and the place to go when you get sick.”