Dover's newest ER celebrated, sparks competition

DOVER — It was a festive affair Thursday for the ribbon cutting at Portsmouth Regional Hospital’s Dover Emergency Room on Central Avenue by Spaulding Turnpike’s Exit 7. The new facility could provide significant competition for Wentworth-Douglass Hospital.

At the site of the new freestanding emergency room was a heated tent with food, music and couches and chairs for lounging. Outside the tent were the lawn game cornhole and a two-person, arcade-style basketball game. The ever-popular Dover Mounted Patrol also made an appearance. Outside the main entrance of the 10,000-square-foot, 24-hour facility, a crowd gathered to listen to Portsmouth Regional Hospital CEO Dean Carucci, along with Dover city officials and political dignitaries on hand to celebrate the opening of the facility.

"We strongly believe in a patient's ability to stay in the community in which they live for advanced care,” Carucci told the crowd, noting the hospital "is the Seacoast's only level II trauma center. We chose this site, and we chose this point because we believe that patients deserve access and this was our chance to provide that north of Portsmouth."

The speakers also included state Sen. David Watters, Dover City Manager Michael Joyal and Mayor Karen Weston, who told the attendees, “We are all very, very happy that you are here.” She said the emergency room would be a resource for “folks on this side of the city who don’t want to travel through town,” a reference to Wentworth-Douglass Hospital's location on the north of side of downtown on Central Avenue. PRH's Dover Emergency Room is located at 10 Central Ave., south of downtown.

Following a Greater Dover Chamber of Commerce ribbon cutting, tours were given around the new 11-room facility that is to be staffed by board-certified emergency room physicians. Highlights included the trauma and behavioral health bays, radiology and lab capabilities and the dedicated entrance for ambulances. According to a fact sheet provided by PRH, the emergency room will employ 45-50 people.

While the ribbon cutting celebrated the new emergency room, the building has yet to officially open, which is dependent on state licensing, according to hospital spokesperson Lynn Robbins, who said that could happen any day, hopefully by next week. “We’re ready to open right now,” she said.

WDH, which recently affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital, has stepped up its marketing campaign around its own emergency room. One advertisement included the words, “When emergency strikes … ‘Take me to Wentworth-Douglass.’"

WDH spokesperson Dawn Fernald told Foster's, “We are doing a marketing campaign to remind people that we are here for emergencies or any health care need and we have been here for the past 110 years.”

“It’s great to have different options in the community. We just want to remind people that we are here,” Fernald said. Part of the reminder is that WDH has a full hospital behind its emergency room with “access to life-saving care just steps away.”

WDH CEO Greg Walker said his hospital is focused on providing lower cost options for immediate care needs with its Express Care urgent care centers and walk-in primary care centers (called Prompt Care) in Dover and Portsmouth.

Urgent-care ConvenientMD has also opened in recent years in Dover, just north of WDH.

Jody Hoffer Gittell, a Portsmouth resident and professor of management at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University, said, "Competition between hospitals over market share is in full swing throughout N.H. and beyond. It's not necessarily harmful, but it can be distracting. What we really need is to invest in community health and wellness, and hospitals are not the primary actors in these efforts."

EMS officials from Dover Fire and Rescue and McGregor Memorial EMS were also on hand for the grand opening. Dover Fire Chief Eric Hagman said the department handles roughly 2,800 emergency transports a year, and he estimated based on previous calls for service, that EMS would transport about 800 of those calls to Portsmouth Regional Hospital's new Dover Emergency Room.

Hagman sees the new facility as a benefit to the city’s overall capacity for service, especially in the southern end of Dover. The typical staffing of an ambulance is two people, but depending on the level of a patient’s need, it could take up to five staff, including the driver, to provide services during transport. The extra staff would get pulled from a fire engine crew, and both the ambulance and fire engine could be pulled out of its service district for 15-20 minutes for the transport across town to WDH, he said.

What determines where a patient goes is based on two things, he said. One part is governed by the state’s patient care protocols, which would dictate where a person would be transported based on the level of need for the patient, as hospitals in the region have different specialties. The other part is patient choice, he said.