To lower patient costs and hassles, Columbus-based OhioHealth is looking to newly opened short stay medical facilities to treat patients who are too sick to see their primary care physicians but don't need emergency room treatment, according to The Columbus Dispatch.
OhioHealth has opened two of these facilities with the hope that low-risk, high-acuity patients suffering from such ailments as diabetes, congestive heart failure or pneumonia will be able to avoid emergency room visits. Patients must be referred by their primary care physician, and can stay between two and 24 hours.
The facilities are above emergency departments at OhioHealth's Westerville Medical Campus and Pickerington Medical Campus.
"We're very excited that this will lower the cost for those patients and avoid transfer to our larger hospitals," said Miles Hawley, MD, system medical director at OhioHealth. "This kind of population can sometimes overwhelm our larger hospitals."