Strong population growth and a rising number of patients who travel from the northern suburbs into downtown Grand Rapids for care led Trinity Health to develop a $6.5 million emergency medical center near Rockford.
The Trinity Health Emergency Center – Rockford on Northland Drive NE, just north of 7 Mile Road, opens July 9, offering a 24-hour destination for people in northern Kent County who need treatment for medical issues such as chest pain, strokes, difficulty breathing, and illnesses and injuries.
The freestanding ER positions an emergency medical facility in Plainfield Township in northern Kent County that offers care at a level above what an urgent care center provides, and in many cases can alleviate the need for patients to travel on their own or via ambulance to the nearest hospital ER when they have a medical emergency.
“A lot of people are traveling from Rockford for emergency care. This bridges that gap,” said Dr. Alexander Gutfraynd of Grand River Emergency Medical Group, the medical director for Trinity Health Emergency Center – Rockford.
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Trinity Health Grand Rapids expects the emergency care center to treat up to 20,000 people annually within two years, which is about the same level of patients that a similar, 13-year-old facility in Byron Township near M-6 treats today.
Staffed by emergency medicine physicians from Grand River Emergency Medical Group P.C., plus advanced practitioners and nurses, the Trinity Health Emergency Center – Rockford includes nine exam rooms, radiology, a diagnostic lab and cardiac monitoring. Grand River Emergency Medical Group also staffs Trinity Health Grand Rapids’ ER and the emergency care center at the southwest medical campus.
The new Rockford-area center “can do anything that an emergency department (at a hospital) can do,” except for critical situations such as traumatic injuries from a vehicle crash, said Kristy Perez, director of emergency nursing services at Trinity Health Grand Rapids.
Following medical protocols through Kent County Emergency Medical Services, staff at the center will have critical patients quickly transported to Trinity Health Grand Rapids’ hospital south of downtown Grand Rapids.
Trinity Health Grand Rapids decided to develop the emergency care center as northern Kent County and the Rockford area continues to record high population growth. Evidence also shows patients coming from that area have higher acuity medical issues.
“This community here in the Rockford area is very populated, it continues to grow and the needs for emergency services are continuing to grow,” said Michelle Pena, chief nursing officer at Trinity Health Grand Rapids. “We now for 11 years have had a standalone emergency department at our Byron Center campus, and that area as well has grown. As we looked at volumes and population patterns, it became the right time to say there needs to be another access point for our community” in northern Kent County.
The new Rockford-area emergency center also can ease pressure on the hospital emergency room at Trinity Health Grand Rapids, which recorded more than 56,000 visits in 2022, the most recent year that data for the state were available.
“We also know that our EDs not only locally, but nationally, are overcrowded. This helps our downtown ED not be overcrowded as well,” Pena said. “So many patients do not call EMS, and oftentimes, they’ll walk in (to a hospital) and they’re having a pretty high-level emergency. Our hope is that they can come here … and they don’t have to drive all the way downtown.”
The Trinity Health Emergency Center – Rockford is the latest example of a standalone emergency room that is not attached to a hospital campus.
A new $40 million outpatient campus McLaren Health Care recently began developing in Grand Ledge, west of Lansing, will include a 17-room emergency department.
In Grand Rapids, Emergency Care Specialists P.C. plans to open RightCare Clinic on East Beltline Avenue in July. The clinic will provide a level of care above what’s available at an urgent care center, yet below what hospitals offer in an emergency room for cases such as traumatic injuries, strokes and heart attacks.
Trinity Health Grand Rapids has no immediate plans for another emergency center beyond the Rockford and Byron Center locations, Pena said.
“We’re really well-covered with the Southwest (campus) and then Rockford and then we have downtown,” she said. “We just need to see and continue to follow the community growth patterns and the geographical spread. Whatever we plan to do is just to continue to respond to the community needs.”
The Trinity Health Emergency Center – Rockford shares the campus with other medical providers, including a health system pharmacy and primary care offices, plus Grand Rapids Ophthalmology, Foot and Ankle Specialists of West Michigan, and Advent Physical Therapy.
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