The new Swedish/Redmond Emergency Department and Ambulatory Care Center will be open for patients Tuesday, Dec. 21 at 8 a.m.
A ribbon-cutting and media tour was held Thursday, Dec. 16. See above for a slide show of the event and tour.
The site, which is located at 18100 Union Hill Rd., is a freestanding emergency department and ambulatory care center. The public will have the opportunity to tour the facility and talk to primary-care physicians during an open house on Saturday, Dec. 18 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The open house will also include a number of free activities such as photos with Santa, frame-decorating, face-painting, balloon artistry, a Christmas tree maze and cookie decorating.
Kevin Brown, Swedish senior vice president and chief administrative officer, said one of the reasons they chose to build a Redmond location was because it was an under-served community. People wanted a more convenient health care provider closer to home. They didn’t want to have to sit in traffic and drive all the way to Seattle, he said.
The Redmond center encompasses nearly 85,000 square feet of space on three floors. It has 18 emergency exam rooms, open and staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week; an advanced diagnostic imaging center (with X-ray, mammography, ultrasound, CT scan and MRI), staffed by partners from Seattle Radiology; an on-site laboratory; and offices for primary- and specialty-care providers.
“One of the benefits of opening a new facility is you get all new stuff,” Brown said.
He added that the Swedish will be “virtually paperless.” Medical records will be electronic, using Epic, Swedish’s electronic health record system. All providers at Swedish/Redmond will have access to this system, which will make it easier for them to share information about a patient such as medical documentation, test results and prescriptions with other caregivers.
Another feature of the emergency department is the missing waiting room. Swedish/Redmond ER Medical Director Brynn Karch said patients will be taken straight into a room and attended to within minutes. He said at Swedish’s Issaquah facility, which Swedish/Redmond is modeled after, the average patient’s visit, from the time they walk through the doors to the time they leave, is 90 minutes.
“It’s been really fun to practice medicine in this environment,” Karch said.
He added that Swedish is very patient focused, which is something Redmond Mayor John Marchione can attest to. Marchione’s first experience with Swedish was a few years ago when his daughter was injured playing soccer in Issaquah. They went to the Swedish there and Marchione said the hospital now has a customer for life with his daughter.
“We received such great customer service,” he said.
Marchione said having a Swedish center in Redmond is exciting for a number of reasons. The facility has created more jobs in the community as well as provided the area with better access to health care. Swedish/Redmond has also been a great corporate citizen in the short time it has been in town, Marchione said, getting involved in the community.
“We’re glad to have another partnership we can point to with pride,” he said.
John Milne, Swedish’s medical director for strategic development, said the new Redmond facility is one way Swedish is bringing a more enhanced level of healthcare to the community and becoming more than just a hospital in downtown Seattle. The Issaquah site was the first step in this direction as the hospital’s first freestanding emergency department in the region. A third facility in Mill Creek is scheduled to open in February.
Construction for Swedish/Redmond began in April. Brown said taking just eight months to be ready for patients was “nothing short of phenomenal.”
However, only the emergency department on the first floor will open on Tuesday. The second and third floors are still under construction. Primary- and specialty-care offices on the second floor are scheduled to open at the end of January. At that point, the six family medicine physicians will move from the Swedish Physicians Redmond Clinic (currently located at 15670 Redmond Way) into the new building. A full range of primary care services will be provided, including pediatric care, geriatric medicine, physicals, preventive health screening and education, sports medicine and orthopedic care.
A sleep lab, rehabilitation clinic and outpatient cardiac diagnostic and vascular ultrasound services will be available on the third floor in May.
The building is managed and owned by Hammes Company, a third-party development partner of Swedish. The company invested $25.5 million in the structure and surrounding parking areas. Panattoni Construction in Seattle was the general contractor and Seattle’s Mahlum Architects did the design.
For more information about Swedish/Redmond, visit www.swedish.org/redmond.
