The 6-mile move of St. Anthony Central Hospital from Denver to Lakewood will send six to 20 new emergency patients a month to Denver Health Medical Center’s busy corridors, according to official contingency plans.
The brand-new St. Anthony Hospital, near West Second Avenue and Union Boulevard, will open to the public June 20, expanding the Catholic hospital’s services but leaving a health care hole on Denver’s near-northwest side. Denver Health officials say they have a good relationship with St. Anthony’s and have discussed the potential impact.
Denver Health expects an influx of car-accident victims, heart-attack patients and other trauma cases that otherwise would have been transported to the St. Anthony Central site at West 16th Avenue and Stuart Street.
“We’ll open up 10 beds in June to plan for this, and if we need more, we can stagger and create capacity,” said Denver Health chief financial officer Peg Burnette. The beds and rooms had recently been renovated but were not yet needed, Burnette said.
For financial purposes, Denver Health assumes that the extra patients will be of the same mix as their current average — relatively low income, many with no insurance to help pay for care. It’s possible the former St. Anthony Central area might host more people with private insurance or Medicare, but Denver Health will not count on that, Burnette said.
The additional load will likely be a break-even development, Burnette said. Any new revenue will be offset by needing more physicians and other services on line for the greater load.
The change will help speed up, though, Denver Health’s planning for a major capital expansion. In recent years the hospital has found beds by renovating older buildings while others like University, Children’s, Exempla St. Joseph and Presbyterian/St. Luke’s have launched large renovations and additions.
“This will put us close to being full,” Burnette said.
St. Anthony’s move to a state-of-the-art campus in the western suburbs comes after planners rejected renovation or expansion of the Central facility as impractical. The hospital, operated by the Centura joint venture created by Catholic Health Initiatives and Adventist Health, says it will continue to serve west Denver.
St. Anthony Central had decided last December to stop delivering babies in non-emergency pregnancies, including at the new Lakewood hospital when it opens. The volume of deliveries was not enough to keep obstetrics financially stable, officials said. Most of those births have gone to Exempla Lutheran and Denver Health.
St. Anthony Central patients will be transferred to the new Lakewood building beginning June 16, with the transition completed for a June 20 opening. Denver Health has offered its paramedic division to help transport critical patients, if necessary.
Michael Booth: 303-954-1686 or mbooth@denverpost.com
