Nonprofit hospitals, in general, are facing challenging times. And that challenge is going to reverberate through our county, whether that means a major facility on a new construction timeline or further corporate creativity to reduce health care costs.
Micro-hospitals are best suited to handle short-stay admissions anticipated to be less than 48 hours. Costs are slightly higher than for an urgent care center, yet lower when compared to traditional hospital settings. Micro-hospitals can meet 90 percent of patients’ basic healthcare needs and tend to flourish most in markets with critical service gaps by preventing at-risk populations from falling through the cracks. Ideally, micro-hospitals should be located within 20 miles of a full-service hospital, to facilitate transfer of patients to larger institutions should higher acuity healthcare needs arise.
The idea of micro-hospitals is gaining traction because costs of construction are far lower than that of more traditional hospital facilities –costing anywhere between $7-$30 million, depending on the range of services available, according to Advisory Board statistics. Micro-hospitals can meet 90% of the community healthcare needs. They seem to flourish best in markets with critical service gaps. Ideally, micro-hospitals are located within 20 miles of a full-service hospital, facilitating the transfer of patients to larger facilities if higher-acuity needs arise. Hospital stays anticipated to be longer than 48 hours are sent to higher-acuity facilities.
In June 2016, Kitsap County emergency personnel participated in Cascadia Rising, a large-scale earthquake drill. At the time, three local hospitals planned to coordinate management of injured casualties: Navy Hospital, which would treat the “walking wounded” (least injured), or Harrison Silverdale and Harrison Bremerton, which would clear their emergency departments to receive the flood of injured patients. While those plans have changed, the grave risk to our community in the event of an earthquake should not be ignored.
