The project will come with 55 jobs and patients will be able to stay for observation for less 24 hours. The health system expects to break ground on the project in July and open spring 2022.
The city council approved the project Monday night following a public hearing and the recommendation of the planning commission.
“It will be a privilege to offer the Beavercreek community expanded access to quality emergency services, as well as even greater coordination of care for Premier Health patients who live, work or shop locally,” Dr. Darin Pangalangan, an emergency physician and Premier Health’s vice president of clinical service lines, said in a statement. “We are pleased to have this opportunity to partner with the city of Beavercreek in planning an expansion of these services at one of our existing sites of care in the community.”
The new ER will be about 1.5 miles from Soin Medical Center’s emergency department, operated by competitor Kettering Health.
“We look forward to more health services being offered throughout Greene County and surrounding communities,” Kettering Health stated about the project.
The expansion of services in Beavercreek reflects the community’s growth, Premier said in a statement, with about 131,000 people living within a 10-mile radius of the proposed site. In 2020, Premier Health said it treated more than 30,000 emergency department patients from the area.
“This growth has set the stage for an increasing demand for choice,” Premier said.
The Dayton Daily News has previously reported on the growth of new emergency departments opening around the region, many concentrated in higher income areas with a well insured patient population.
Hospital networks have opened eight emergency departments in the region in the past decade, some attached to a hospital and some freestanding. Two others have closed.
Satellite ERs have the ability to provide crucial care in areas that don’t have full service hospitals and might otherwise not have immediate access to emergency health services.
Freestanding ERs can also play a business role when they serve as a gateway to more patients referred to more services within the health system.
Allan Baumgarten, author of the Ohio Health Market Review, which analyzes market trends, previously said opening urgent cares, retail clinics, and free standing emergency departments all help health systems with the strategy of expanding their geographical reach. He said health systems often look for zip codes where incomes are above average and where many people have employer-sponsored health coverage, which pays higher rates than Medicaid or Medicare.
“Those are the target audiences for these new services that are being opened in these areas,” Baumgarten said.
The majority of the region’s new ERs in recent years were built by Kettering Health and have been attached to medical offices with other services. Several of these projects have opened near existing Premier emergency departments, such as the Troy hospital near Upper Valley Medical Center and a Middletown medical center near Atrium Medical Center.
Kettering Health opened a Piqua ER in 2020, a Middletown ER in 2018, a Franklin ER in 2016, an Eaton ER in 2015, and a Huber Heights ER in 2013. Kettering Health added an emergency department in 2019 attached to the network’s new Troy hospital, and is also constructing a new medical center to open in Springfield, which will have emergency services.
Mercy Health’s new emergency department in Enon, just outside Fairborn, opened in 2019, inching the hospital chain into Kettering Health’s market.
Premier Health’s Austin Boulevard emergency center opened in 2018 and Jamestown in 2013. Premier’s Good Samaritan Hospital and its emergency department closed in Dayton 2019, and Premier also has shut down its new Mason emergency department.
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