A $60 million medical campus being mapped out for Stone Mountain could include a first in the Southeast - a freestanding, acute care hospital focused entirely on emergency medicine.

Plans for the campus call for a 50,000-square-foot hospital, an assisted-living center and three medical office buildings that would house specialty practices, including gastroenterology, neurology and cardiology.

The hospital, a joint venture between Stone Mountain Hospital Inc. and Arizona-based Gilbert Hospital, would help address the emergency room crisis in Georgia by trimming wait-times and alleviating ER overcrowding, CEO Larry Gold said.

As the uninsured population surges, patients often use hospital emergency rooms as their primary care provider. That’s because, hospitals, by law, must stabilize patients in the ER, regardless of their ability to pay. Swamped with many non-emergency cases, ERs are overcrowded, leading to long patient wait-times.

Stone Mountain ER will be focused on delivering emergency care to local residents in a consistent and acceptable wait time, often under 30 minutes but never more than 30 minutes after arrival. Another main focus will be solving healthcare dilemmas and working out adminstrative post care details. Also planned are general care services designed to meet payment obligations and budgets.

Highlights of planned services:
• Emergency Physicians on site 24/7
• Short waiting times to see a doctor
• Complete Imaging Center for onsite diagnostic support
• Completely equipped Surgery Center and a suite of surgeons on call.
• Post trauma beds on site and trasfer agreements to nearby general hospitals with ambulance or air ambulance support on site.

The facility is to be located on a 31-acre parcel just east of the Yellow River. Another local consideration is that Gwinnett County owns the land north and south of the proposed hospital site. This could mean a potential 90-acre mixed-use development being built around the hospital campus someday that would amount to millions of dollars in investment.

Estimated opening is mid to late 2010.

• Stone Mountain Hospital, Inc.
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