New Brookwood free-standing emergency department not just about economic impact, Hoover mayor says

The soon-to-open Brookwood Medical Center freestanding emergency department near Greystone is about more than dollars, Hoover Mayor Gary Ivey said this morning.

Ivey addressed a crowd of more than 100 people at the ribbon cutting and open house for the Brookwood facility off Alabama 119. He said while the new emergency center will financially benefit the city, it will also help save lives.

“The economic impact’s not as important as the kids that are going to have golf cart wrecks out here, or motorcycle wrecks or the car wrecks,” Ivey said. The Brookwood doctors and staff will help save the lives of people who suffer heart attacks and strokes, "and for that, I thank you so much.”

Ivey said the city has enjoyed working with Brookwood in the past and hopes the close relationship will continue. While he did not want to belittle the investment Brookwood made to be a part of the city, he said the most important part of the free-standing emergency department is what cannot be boiled down to numbers.

“We’ll never be able to quantify what you guys are going to be able to do for us or the lives that you’re going to save because you can say, well, you know, you’d have saved them if you got them to the other ER room. But that’s not a fact,” Ivey said.

The $19.5 million, 25,000-square-foot facility has 12 private rooms, two mental health rooms, a trauma room and rooms to handle X-rays, mammograms, gynecology and other services. While the facility aims to have little to no wait for patients, there is also a triage room where a nurse will check patients and prioritize their treatment if all 12 exam rooms fill up.

If a patient needs transport to a hospital, there will be an ambulance on the premises as well as a helicopter, said Conrad Brown, Brookwood's emergency administrative director.

“Hopefully this will provide streamlined care, ease of access and will help everybody in the community feel safer because they know they will have access to medical care significantly faster,” said Jim McLester, the medical director for the free-standing emergency department.

With the opening of this Brookwood facility, Hoover now has an emergency care center on each side of town, Ivey said. The other is Medical West, which opened the state's first free-standing emergency department in May at the corner of Interstate 459 and Alabama 150.

Garry Gause, CEO of the Southern Region of Tenant Healthcare and former CEO of Brookwood Medical Center, said opening one of the first free-standinge emergency departments in the state was a large undertaking.

“This was a new animal, and even though there’s another one that opened a little earlier than us because they didn’t have any opposition to their CON [Certificate of Need], we’re fortunate that we were able to file the first CON in the state for this,” Gause said.

Brookwood faced a delay in opening its free-standing emergency department because of opposition from Trinity Medical Center. The Supreme Court officially cleared Brookwood in that legal battle in October 2013.

“It’s not easy being an innovator, and sometimes on this project it felt a little bit like Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill only to have it roll back down to the bottom of the hill,” Gause said. "But ultimately we were able to get across the finish line and push that rock over the hill.”

Gause added that he is glad Brookwood can offer this additional service within its network. The network grew earlier this year when Brookwood Medical Center merged with the Baptist Health System.

“This will add to the locations that we’re able to provide within the network, and it’s an important component for us to improve the lives of the people we serve in all of the surrounding communities,” Gause said. 

Brookwood's free-standinge emergency department will officially open on Nov. 30. It is located at the corner of U.S. 280 and Alabama 119 at 7131 Cahaba Valley Road.