Gulf Coast Medical Center ER closes
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GULFPORT -- Beds are empty and there's not a scrub suit in sight. Life-saving machines have stopped whirring and beeping. There are no people talking. Blaring ambulance sirens are gone, leaving only funereal silence and the occasional echo.
Monday at midnight, the emergency room at Gulf Coast Medical Center on DeBuys Road closed its doors for good. There were no violations, according to the state health department's Office of Health Protection.
The ER, said hospital officials, simply cost too much to run.
"With the population shift to the north, ER visits have remained dramatically lower since Hurricane Katrina," Chief Executive Officer Brenda Whitwell said in an official statement. She called it a "consolidation", closing the Gulf Coast ER, and merging the patient load with Biloxi Regional Medical Center.
Both hospitals are owned by Health Management Associates, a company that saw its stock plummet earlier this year, and is involved in a class-action lawsuit in Florida. The company owns several hospitals in Mississippi and in the southeast United States.
The hospital wouldn't release the daily cost of running the ER, but said those dollars will go towards improving other programs, such as obstetrics, orthopedics, neurology and mental health. Whether that means more employees, equipment or facilities is still up in the air, said spokesperson Lori Bickell.
On its last day, Gulf Coast's ER saw 27 emergency patients, all of whom were treated and released, or admitted into the hospital. It averaged 35 visits daily. Biloxi Regional sees 70 visits per day.
At 2 p.m., American Medical Response's last ambulance rolled in, said spokesperson Rick Fayard.
With the closure, the staff of 17, including six doctors all have new fates. Eleven moved into new roles at Gulf Coast Medical Center and one went to Biloxi Regional. Five left the hospital altogether. Some of the ER doctors are becoming hospitalists, said Bickell. Hosptalists have multiple functions, from stabilizing emergencies, to getting patients admitted or transferred, to monitoring, then discharging inpatients.
Because many people use the emergency room for not just emergencies, said Dr. David Putt, executive director of University Hospital in Jackson, any loss of an ER impacts the community.
"Somebody's going to have to pick up the load," he said. If their doors closed, he said, 60 percent of their patient load would just disappear.
Those somebodies are Garden Park Medical Center in Orange Grove, Biloxi Regional Medical Center and Memorial Hospital in Gulfport.
For Mandy Plummer and friends, leaving doctor visits at Gulf Memorial Medical Center on Tuesday, 18 hours after the closure, they worry about increased wait times, especially at Biloxi Regional, at night, when the ER is the only thing open.
"Where are people around here going to go?" Plummer said. "Things happen at night.
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Related: Gulf Coast Medical Center ER closes
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