New Emergency Room And Urgent Care Center Opens In Maumee

BY NANCY GAGNET | MIRROR REPORTER — ProMedica has opened a new emergency room and urgent care facility at Side Cut Crossings in Maumee.

ProMedica officials were on hand on October 28 for the ceremonial ribbon-cutting at the Toledo Hospital Emer-gency and Urgent Care Center, which is said to be a first-of-its-kind facility in the area. 

The facility began serving patients on November 1. President of ProMedica Toledo Hospital Dawn Buskey welcomed those in attendance for the ribbon-cutting, including ProMedica staff, Maumee city officials and representatives from the organizations facilitating the project.

“We really felt very strongly that we wanted to give our patients all of the convenience of an urgent care and the expertise of having physicians here in an emergency room on-site 24/7 to service the needs of the patients here in our community,” she said.

Maumee Mayor Richard Carr presented Buskey with a plaque and welcomed ProMedica to the city.

“This is the beginning of a brand new development in the city of Maumee and we are really excited. You are here in the very beginning stages of it and that makes a big difference – it will make it successful, and we welcome you to Maumee,” Carr said.

Developers broke ground on the project 18 months ago. The new, 12,000-square-foot facility houses 10 medical rooms where up to 200 patients per day can be treated. Approximately 50 to 60 medical staff will work at the facility. 

The emergency room (ER) services that are provided are the same as those provided at a large hospital ER department, such as X-ray, CT, ultrasound, lab work and more, said Dr. Timothy Zwayer, who will serve as the ER medical director.

Intuitive Health, a Texas-based medical management company, partnered with ProMedica to facilitate the project. Demand for additional emergency services in this area prompted ProMedica to open the facility at the Maumee site, said Thom Herrmann, CEO of Intuitive Health. Currently, the company is partnering with 16 health care systems throughout the United States to build facilities that mirror the Side Cut model in which both urgent care and emergency care services are under one roof. By the end of 2023, Intuitive Health will open 60 such facilities in the country.

“This is the first one in Ohio,” Herrmann said. “We feel blessed to have the opportunity to collaborate with ProMedica. They are one of the most highly respected health care systems in the country and so to have the opportunity to partner and bring this unique service to Maumee is a great opportunity.”

If a patient needs to be admitted to a hospital from the site, he or she will be directly admitted to a ProMedica hospital, he added.   

Having both urgent care and emergency room services in one location eliminates the need for patients to “self-triage” a medical situation while also ensuring that they will only be billed for the level of services received, said Intuitive Health chief medical officer Jay Woody. 

“This facility alone will save millions of dollars for patients and health insurance companies because we defer 70 percent of our patients to the urgent care side – so they pay for urgent care services instead of emergency room care services, and the difference is huge,” he said.

The COVID-19 pandemic increased demand for the type of services provided at a freestanding urgent care and emergency room facility, he added.

“It increased interest in what we do because of the value-based care that we offer,” Woody said. 

Other city officials on hand for the ribbon-cutting were city administrator Patrick Burtch, Fire Chief Brandon Loboschefski, Police Chief Josh Sprow, council member Gabe Barrow and Maumee Chamber of Commerce executive director Kristin Meyer.