OMAHA, Neb. (AP) - A hospital in Omaha will be closing its doors after 40 years and opening a new emergency room six blocks away.
Creighton University Medical Center will stop taking patients Friday, the Omaha World-Herald (https://bit.ly/2siLmtU ) reported. When the hospital closes, a new emergency room will open six blocks east at Creighton University Medical Center University Campus.
The decades-old hospital’s Level I trauma center and teaching facility for Creighton’s medical school will move to a third facility, the expanded Creighton University Medical Center-Bergan Mercy.
CUMC-Bergan Mercy’s chief medical officer, Dr. Devin Fox, said the closure of the hospital won’t leave northeast Omaha without medical services.
“One of our main priorities was to make sure our patients and their families in this area continue to receive care,” Fox said.
Officials from Creighton and the Catholic Health Initiatives system, which oversees the three facilities, said they met with residents, community leaders and others to identify necessary services in the neighborhood after initially announcing plans to move the academic medical center in 2014.
Patients at the CUMC University Campus who need to be treated in the hospital will be stabilized in the emergency room and sent to the nearest hospital in the CHI system.
CUMC-Bergan Mercy President Kevin Nokels said that of the 36,000 who typically arrived in the hospital’s emergency room in a given year, only about 2,000 were admitted.
CHI Health said that CUMC-Bergan Mercy will become the closest trauma center within driving range of 60 percent of the households in greater Omaha.
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Information from: Omaha World-Herald, https://www.omaha.com
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