Providence announces $177 million investment in emergency department, cardiac care

PORTLAND Ore. (KPTV) - In the next few years, those in the Portland region may be looking forward to shorter wait times for the emergency room and even better cardiac care.

On Tuesday, Providence announced a $177 million investment in its emergency and cardiac care departments.

They said that around 200,000 people visit their emergency rooms each year, but that number is steadily growing, and their resources are often pushed to the limit.

Dr. Jeremy Lynn, the Regional Medical Director for Emergency Services, said every single day they are forced to care for patients in hallways and they often have to go into total ambulance divert (meaning, they are unable to accept any more patients from ambulances).

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“It takes a big toll on the docs, on the nurses, on the techs,” Lynn said. “If you’re an ED tech and you’re doing an EKG on someone up front and you can just tell looking at them that they’re in pain, they’re sick and they need care right now but you know there’s no space for them, that’s a big moral injury on everyone in the department.”

On a good day, wait times can be as low as a half hour, but on a busy day, patients may wait between four and eight hours for care.

Lynn said the demand has been steadily increasing over the last decade due to the population, and the amount of people needing in-patient medical care which has filled up hospitals and put more strain on emergency departments.

The emergency department alone will receive a $92 million investment, to increase capacity for up to 50,000 more emergency room visits each year, and update the space for modern equipment and procedures.

“Some of the newer equipment needs more space, the types of procedures we do require more monitoring and more equipment, and having spaces that were built 20, 30, 40 years ago were not designed to have that type of equipment,” Lynn told Fox 12.

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But it’s not just a Providence problem- Dr. Lynn said while their additions will help, low emergency room capacity is a region-wide issue and things need to change across the board.

“The entire city is under-bedded, both for in-patient medical care and for emergency medical care, so our EDs across the city are all at capacity essentially,” he said. “Unfortunately if one ED shuts their doors and goes on divert, meaning turns the ambulances away, the next closest ED is almost immediately overwhelmed.”

Lynn said he expects emergency room capacity to start to increase later this year.

Providence Portland Medical Center will go from 52 emergency department patient care areas up to 79, while Providence St. Vincent Medical Center will go from 58 to 84.

Providence is also investing an additional $85 million to expand its critical cardiac care facilities, as current facilities do not have the capacity to care for patients who need long-term intensive care.

“Providence has proudly grown into one of the largest providers of complex cardiac care on the West Coast and a national center of excellence, but the patients we’re seeing today have much more complex cardiac care needs,” said Dan Oseran, M.D., Providence Heart Institute executive medical director. “This is our opportunity to re-imagine cardiac care for the next 50 years and ensure that Portland remains a world-class destination for heart care.”

About $144 million of the total amount will come from donors, and the hospital still has $19 million of that amount left to raise.

They expect all of these projects to be completed at some point in 2027.

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