By Kathleen E. Carey
Daily Times
ASTON, Pa. — In its first four months, the ChristianaCare micro-hospital has had almost 4,500 people come to the Aston facility for care, far exceeding what their initial estimates had been.
“Overall, the model at Aston has been incredibly impactful,” Pauline Corso, president of Network Continuity & Growth for ChristianaCare, said. “It was June 2 when we opened. Through September, we saw almost 4,500 emergency visit patients.”
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In its first 24 hours in Aston, ChristianaCare providers saw volumes at levels they expected to see in two months.
“Aston opened June 2 and since the first 18 hours, we exceeded where we thought we would be two months in volume,” Corso said. “The volume continues to be significant.”
The Aston site is a fully licensed hospital with a 10-bed 24/7 emergency department and 10-bed inpatient unit. It also has dedicated imaging, a pharmacy and lab for the 20,000-square-feet hospital.
Corso said they anticipate opening the second-floor physician offices at the Aston facility next week and added that the Springfield micro-hospital on State Road is anticipated to open next fall.
The second-floor Aston health center will include primary care, cardiology, cardiac diagnostic, some behavioral health and imaging services.
“Our intent is to try and balance and fill the most critical needs in the community,” Corso said. “As we have done our market research, primary care is one of the biggest gaps. People are going way too long without the ability to see a primary care or even to engage in care.
“We want to be there for the emergencies but we also want to be there to go upstream and try to keep people healthy so that they don’t need the emergency department,” she said.
‘Complementary player’
Douglas Azar, senior vice president of Strategic Clinical Integration for ChristianaCare, explained how they see their role since Prospect Medical Holdings Inc. closed Crozer Health last year.
“There’s been a huge shakeup in the health care landscape locally and we are just trying to establish significant health care services across the region just to be a complementary player in addition to those health care providers who are already in the community,” he said.
Corso provided more statistics about ChristianaCare’s Aston micro-hospital, including that 722 people came or left by ambulance.
“We did have 12 air transports,” she added. “Our first air transport happened within the first 24 hours. That was a patient that was transferred to us by EMS and in the field, did not seem critically ill, but upon presentation and some imaging studies, identified a life-threatening event. We were able to quickly stabilize and mobilize by air and that patient’s doing very, very well.”
She spoke of how the community gets to the facility.
“What we are typically seeing is 90% of the patients come to the emergency room, they’re coming by car and going home,” Corso said. “So, they’re treated and discharged home.”
The top three emergency department visit reasons to this facility are chest pain, head injury and abdominal pain.
About 5% to 6% are stabilized and transferred to a higher level of care, Corso noted.
“We do have transfer agreements with all of the neighboring hospitals,” she said. “It’s really based on patient choice and whether the hospital choice can meet the clinical needs and have a bed available.”
About 4% to 5%, or approximately 68 in the past four months, have been admitted to the in-patient unit.
Typically, Corso said, they see about 45 patients daily, although there have been times where they had 75 patients.
“Normally, though, you can see from when a patient comes in to when they see a provider, about 20 minutes, which is significantly improved and the goal is really to get them out within no more than two hours,” Corso said.
“We can do that because some of the most critical patients are going directly to full-service hospitals,” she said, adding that the in-patient facility provides care for lower acuity needs and stays average two to three days.
“That frees up the bed in other hospitals to care for the more acute patients,” Corso explained.
‘Relief valve’
She underscored its limitations.
“It’s not a trauma center,” Corso said. “It’s not an urgent care. It is a hospital, but we do not have operating rooms or intensive care.
“We’ve worked with first responders and EMS so that they know for those patients who have trauma or need direct access to operating rooms, they will continue to go to Riddle or to some of the other hospitals where that patient need can be accommodated,” she added.
Corso said almost all of the team at Aston from the nurses to the techs to the patient access team were former Crozer employees.
“They are amazing, thrilled to be back serving their community,” she added.
Corso also noted that ChristianaCare acquired four former Crozer ambulatory sites — facilities in Glen Mills, Media, Broomall and Havertown — to provide ambulatory, primary care, geriatric care, three imaging centers, two ambulatory surgery centers and endoscopy suites.
She anticipated that radiation and oncology will be reopening at the Broomall center soon.
Azar added, “We are not pretending that we are going to solve all the woes from what happened with the Crozer bankruptcy.
“But we’re happy to contribute both physician outpatient services, primary care mostly, imaging services and of course, these 24/7 emergency departments and some overnight beds to at least be a relief valve,” he said.
Delaware County Council at a recent meeting, thanked ChristianaCare for the services they are providing for the community.
“The stats are really remarkable: 4,500 have already gone through the Aston campus,” County Council Member Dr. Monica Taylor said. “Thank you for the work that you’re doing in Delaware County. You’ve been a great partner in helping to expand access to care here in our county.”
Council Member Elaine Paul Schaefer had similar sentiments.
“Thank you for coming,” she said. “Welcome to Delaware County and build more.”
Created in Delaware in 1888, ChristianaCare is a not-for-profit health care system that also serves Maryland, New Jersey and Chester and Delaware counties in Pennsylvania. Annually, the system sees more than 250,000 emergency department visits and they employ 15,000 people spread throughout 200 facilities.
Most of the seven ChristianaCare sites in Delaware County are new within the last year. They also have four in Chester County, including the former Jennersville Hospital.
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