Avera adding emergency department in new clinic

Avera Medical Group will include the state’s first free-standing emergency department as part of its new westside clinic.

The three-story facility at 28th Street and Marion Road is scheduled to start construction this fall.

As Avera executives looked at demographic changes and population projections, the need to expand primary care on the west side of the city became apparent, said Dr. Dave Kapaska, president and CEO of Avera McKennan Hospital & University Health Center.

The data also revealed 45,000 people living west of Interstate 29 without close access to an emergency department, he said.

“After researching that … we felt it would be a very appropriate thing to add onto this project and serve that part of the city very well,” Kapaska said.

While the emergency department is contiguous with the rest of the clinic, independent stand-alone emergency rooms are becoming more prevalent across the country, he added

“Less than 30 percent of patients who go to an emergency room get admitted to the hospital,” Kapaska said. “Most actually go home.”

Patients who need to be admitted will be transferred to Avera McKennan or the Avera Heart Hospital at Avera’s cost, he said.

“We move patients back and forth depending on what their needs are semi-regularly, as needed, and the patients aren’t charged for that.”

The 70,000-square-foot clinic also will include urgent care, which handles patients with less serious conditions such as sprains or sinus infections. Because it will be next to the emergency department, patients can be referred back and forth.

In addition to caring for illnesses such as severe abdominal pain — a top reason for seeking emergency care — and injuries such as lacerations or broken bones, the emergency room will be designed to stabilize patients who come in with critical symptoms.

Like other Avera emergency rooms, it will have access at all times to the Avera eCare eEmergency telemedicine services. Billing will be similar to a hospital emergency room.

Other services offered in the building will include family practice, internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, behavioral health counseling, a laboratory, radiology and an Avera Breast Center location.

It’s scheduled to open late next summer.

The emergency department will be staffed by a physician, nurses and a care team constantly and will include enhanced imaging services and CT scanning.

Patients will be able to choose which emergency room in town they visit, Kapaska said. Having urgent care next to the west-side emergency center also could help with overflow if the department were to become overwhelmed, he said.

“There’s a queuing challenge everywhere,” he added. “The hope would be with three options (in the Avera system locally), we’d be prepared for that. We feel like we’ve right-sized it and built it in a way we could add to it if we need to.”

Avera Medical Group clinic visits in Sioux Falls totaled more than 607,000 during the past fiscal year, or a monthly average of 50,600. On the west side, the Avera Medical Group clinic at 6000 W. 41st St. had nearly 38,000 visits in the past year, or a monthly average of more than 3,100. That clinic will stay open after the new facility opens.