Emergency Department now open at Mooresville campus

A new Emergency Department serving Morgan, Hendricks and Marion Counties opens at 8 a.m. today at St. Francis Hospital – Mooresville, 1201 Hadley Road.

It is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The Emergency Department is located near St. Francis-Mooresville's main entrance at 1201 Hadley Road, adjacent to the hospital’s PromptMed urgent care facility.

Highlights include:

• 14 treatment rooms
• two acute care rooms
• state-of-the-art equipment
• wireless communication technology and bedside charting for improved caregiver communication and efficiency
• access point for St. Francis’ renowned Emergency Heart Attack Response Team (EHART) approach to cardiac care
• a community room for emergency medical services professionals

The Emergency Department is staffed by 22 board-certified emergency physicians from Emergency Physicians of Indianapolis, several specialty physicians, three in-house hospitalists who facilitate patient admissions, and nurses trained in acute care and trauma situations.

With the opening of the St. Francis-Mooresville Emergency Department, PromptMed hours have now changed to 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. PromptMed treats about 20,000 patients a year.

What goes up must come down:

Surgery center enters new era of care

The original Center for Hip & Knee Surgery building has been demolished in the wake of the Center’s move into a brand new building earlier this summer. (See related blog below.)

The Center was founded in 1986 by Dr. Merrill Ritter and was the fist center in Indiana to specialize in joint replacement surgery.

The Center performs nearly 2,000 joint replacements each year and is recognized as a leader in joint replacement surgery, treating patients from all over Indiana, the Midwest and the nation. The Center has performed more than 23,000 joint replacements over the past 20 years and instructed hundreds of surgeons in the latest techniques and methods for implantation of joint implants.

The Center is ranked No. 1 in Indiana for joint surgery for the second year in a row by HealthGrades, the leading healthcare ratings service. HealthGrades reviews more than 5,000 hospitals throughout the United States and ranks those medical facilities using Medicare data and quality measures, such as complication rates. It also ranked in the top 5 percent in the nation for joint surgery and have been a 5-star rated hospital for joint care for the last eight consecutive years.

In addition, there are only five members of the Knee Society in the State of Indiana, and all five practice at the Center for Hip and Knee Surgery. Only three members of the Hip Society practice in Indiana, two of them at the Center for Hip and Knee surgery. Both these societies include only a select group of approximately the top 100 surgeons in the United States in their respective fields.

Hadley Road now open

Hadley Road is now open at the intersection of SR 67, though work is still being done there. Traffic flow is fairly normal most times of the day. This construction should be completed sometime this month.

SR 144, south of the hosptial, is still closed, possibly for as long as five more months, according to the Indiana Department of Transportation. The road has been closed since the early summer floods, which washed out a bridge.

IDOT officials say it will take time to do the repair job right, and it would be too expensive to building a temporary bridge to reroute the road during construction.

The opening of the road will correspond with the opening of an additional Emergency Department entrance off of 144.