On Dec. 20, Highline Medical Center (HMC) will merge their Tukwila Specialty Campus emergency room (ER) into the recently expanded ER at their main campus in Burien, according to Highline CEO Mark Benedum.

The other functions of the Tukwila campus will stay put, including rehabilitation and psychiatry departments, he said.

In a letter to the community, Benedum wrote, “Merging our two ERs into one state-of-the-art facility will enable us to continue to provide high-quality care, while eliminating costly duplication of services.”

In 2010, the Burien ER was expanded from 7,000 square feet to 24,000, exam rooms jumped from 18 to 34, and they improved incoming ambulance capacity, Benedum said.

“It was built to be large enough to handle the need on both campuses, so it was built to be able to grow into it,” he said.

For Tukwila, Benedum said HMC has partnered with HealthPoint to put an urgent care facility in place of the ER. The urgent care facility is expected to open in early February. Healthpoint has plans to move the facility to the Tukwila Village development in two to three years.

HMC took over the Tukwila campus from Riverton, a for-profit health care company, in 1989, and Benedum said the decision to consolidate was largely based on the kinds of medical problems patients were bringing to the ER since that time.

“We stopped taking ambulances at the specialty campus (in Tukwila) about 10 years ago and while the patient volumes have not dropped off much it has really, for the past several years, not been an emergency room and been more of an urgent care center.”

“The Tukwila community has a high rate of uninsured patients, has a high rate of Medicaid patients and HealthPoint, as a federally qualified health center, really is in a great position because of their funding from the federal government to make sure there are not any gaps,” he said. “Highline Medical Center on its own cannot meet all of the needs so to have a organization like HealthPoint … to serve a community that has really high needs and has been using an ER for that – now they are going to have a regular clinic to go to and I think that will be a great thing.”

As to whether the consolidation comes back to a down economy and its effect on HMC, Benedum said, “I see the bigger issue is the appropriate use of emergency care, and emergency rooms are a very high-cost way to deliver care and they are for emergencies. When it becomes used as a source of primary care because it is not available in other locations that, particularly in a tough economy, is a very expensive way to provide care.”

“The vast majority of patients seen in the (Tukwila) specialty campus emergency room could have been seen in a physician’s office and that is really what HealthPoint is going to provide – they are going to provide a better, lower-cost option for that care than an emergency room.”

“When you ask, ‘Did the economy have an impact on (the decision to consolidate)?’ Well yes, it puts a lot of pressure on trying to maintain two emergency rooms at a time when there is really only the need for one,” Benedum said. “I think that made it really clear that once we had the capacity on (the Burien) campus to do this, it was the right thing to do.”

Benedum said the existing ER staff in Tukwila will maintain their jobs and will be brought over to the Burien campus.

For patients curious about how and when to choose ER care versus urgent care or seeing a primary physician, Highline Medical Center has a webpage detailing those decisions found at http://www.highlinemedicalcenter.org/healthcare-services/emergency-serv….