The fate of the Hunt Regional Emergency Medical Center at Commerce is scheduled to be decided in 90 days.
The facility, located on the southwest side of the city at 2800 State Hwy. 24, is the only emergency medical center in Commerce. It is operated by Hunt Regional Healthcare, which also administers the Hunt Regional Medical Center, the hospital in Greenville.
On Tuesday evening, the Hunt Memorial Hospital District Board of Directors voted to conduct a 90-day review of the Commerce emergency center before deciding whether to convert it to an urgent care center, as has been proposed, leave it as is, or do something else.
Hunt Regional Healthcare Public Information Officer Lisa Hill confirmed the results of Tuesday’s vote on Wednesday afternoon. The public at large will have an opportunity to comment on the process, she said.
“I’m sure that there will be some public forums included,” Hill said.
The vote followed a Memorial Day weekend of ambiguity and confusion about the future of the Commerce emergency center. On Sunday, a Facebook post by Cumby police officer Jeff Hundley claimed the board was planning to vote Tuesday to repurpose the facility into an urgent care center. That post was shared by Hunt County Precinct 2 Justice of the Peace Kerry Crews. Other Facebook users expressed concern and disapproval in response to the idea of Commerce losing its emergency medical center.
On Sunday, apparently in response to the buzz on social media, Hill posted nearly identical comments on both Crews’ and Hundley’s pages:
I am the Public Information Officer for Hunt Regional Healthcare and I am posting this response from our Administrator/CEO Richard Carter. On behalf of Hunt Regional, I would like to share a few facts and thoughts with you about your concern for the Hunt Regional Emergency Medical Center in Commerce. The Board is not considering a closure of the facility, but they are discussing a transformation of the services from a full time emergency room to a 10-12 hour per day Urgent Care Center. Several key factors are driving this consideration.
First, the economic requirements of a 24/7 emergency room is substantial and given the low patient volumes and minor illnesses of those patients utilizing the Commerce ER, the operation of the ER has led to an annual loss of 2.2 million dollars. This loss is prior to the Covid -19 pandemic. The current situation has created an even greater loss to almost $300,000 per month from March through May, or an annual loss of 3.5 million dollars. Unfortunately, this is unsustainable.
A second key factor driving the discussion is the type of patient utilizing the facility. For those patients utilizing the Commerce ER, 70% of the pre-covid patients qualified as minor care and more appropriate to an Urgent Care Center. Thirty percent, or 6-8 on a daily basis, qualified in the emergency category. For the 70% minor care patients, they are required to pay for services based on an emergency room scale, or about 4 times that of an Urgent Care Center. Fortunately for the 30% requiring emergency care, we have a superior 911 system, very responsive ground ambulance service based at the EMC and two strong first responder groups which serve the Commerce area.
This discussion and ultimate decision is not taken lightly by the Board or Hunt Regional leadership. Our purpose is to serve the community with services they require in a fiscally responsible manner. Sometimes the accomplishment of our purpose is difficult. I hope this information assists your understanding of the discussion.
Members of the public were able to call in to Tuesday’s meeting. The notice of the meeting was posted to the Hunt Regional Medical Center’s website on the bottom of the site’s front page, in a module labeled “Latest News.” The notice was dated May 22, the Friday before Memorial Day. The published notice did not include any agenda items related to the Commerce emergency center. The notice did include call-in instructions.
Tuesday’s meeting began as scheduled at 5 p.m. Public comments were received early in the proceedings. Callers were limited to three minutes. Most of those who commented expressed opposition to Commerce losing its emergency center. Another caller, Randy Starks of Commerce, expressed concern over the way Hunt Regional had been managing the process.
“Normally when you’re making a decision of this magnitude … the public is made aware of it by several different mediums. You have opportunities to explain to the public why you’re making the decision, so that the public is well informed,” Starks said. “Right now we’ve basically been blindsided. There hasn’t really been a reaching out, except through Facebook messages.”
Following the public portion of the board meeting, the board went into closed session, which is standard at such meetings. Both the public and closed sessions each lasted about an hour. Following the closed session, the board concluded the meeting with a brief public summary of what had been decided in closed session. Audio of the summary was unclear, and after the board hung up its line, callers remaining on the conference call expressed shared uncertainty about what had been said, although it seemed that the board had voted to delay a final decision. On Wednesday, Hill confirmed to KETR the basics of what had been decided on during the closed session.
No timetable of events beyond the 90-day duration of the study period itself has been announced.
The emergency center has served Commerce since its opening in May 2015. In 2013, voters in the Hunt Memorial Hospital District approved a $12.3 million bond package that funded new emergency/outpatient facilities in Commerce and Quinlan, as well as a renovation of the third floor of the Greenville hospital. The bonds, scheduled to be paid back over a 20-year period, increased the hospital district property tax rate by .0181 cents.
The complex includes four exam rooms, four observation rooms, one trauma/treatment room, a helicopter landing pad and ambulance station, and EMS living quarters. A Herald-Banner report from 2015 estimated that about $5 million of the bond package was used to construct the Commerce facility.
Commerce had previously been served by the Hunt Regional Community Hospital at 2900 Sterling Hart Drive, which closed in May 2015 and was torn down in early 2017.
The Hunt Memorial Hospital District dates from 1981. In addition to the Greenville hospital and the emergency centers in Commerce and Quinlan, the Hunt Regional website also lists as its operations a behavioral health center in Commerce; family practice clinics in Commerce, Emory, Greenville and Quinlan; imaging centers in Greenville, Rockwall and Royse City; an urgent care center in Greenville; a specialty practice center in Greenville; a medical park in Greenville, and an outpatient lab service in Sulphur Springs.
