Freestanding ER opens in west Denver to expand access to emergency care

For people living around Sloans Lake, getting to a full-service emergency room hasnt always been easy, but now a freestanding ER has opened its doors, bringing critical care closer to home.

Brent Levy, the medical director of the HCA HealthOne emergency department, said the neighborhood has changed significantly over the last decade.

As some of the larger healthcare facilities moved to the suburbs, there was really no access to acute care and emergency care within the Sloans Lake area, and so there was a gap in care," Levy said.

The historical St. Anthony's Hospital originally operated near Sloan's Lake from 1893 until it relocated to its current Lakewood campus in 2011, leaving a gap in emergency care for those living around Sloan's Lake for the past 15 years.

Levy told Denver7 that longer access to medical facilities meant longer access to critical care.

Patients around this neighborhood who were having life-threatening conditions like strokes or heart attacks really had to drive a far away or call 911 and then have a long transport time to a state-of-the-art medical facility. We filled that gap with this location, Levy said.

The new facility can treat anything from heart attacks to strokes, with specialized care available through telemedicine.

If you came into this facility with a stroke, you'd see a board-certified emergency medicine physician, and then within a matter of minutes, via telemedicine, you'd also see a board-certified stroke neurologist. We can provide really fast, life-saving care here, where 10 to 15 years ago, without telemedicine, we wouldn't have been able to do that, Levy said.

Doctors said the goal is to cut down the time it takes people to get the care they need when every minute matters.

It's not an urgent care. It's an emergency department staffed by board-certified emergency medicine physicians and emergency medicine nurses. You're getting really high-quality care really quickly in your neighborhood.

Levy told Denver7 that freestanding ERs are becoming more common both in Denver and around the country.

You can't put a hospital everywhere. It's just too big, and too expensive. These locations really provide an outlet for communities and neighborhoods to get access to really high-quality care, Levy said.

The ER is not attached to a hospital so patients who need to be admitted will be transferred to a nearby facility.