West Penn ER back to life
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Highmark president and CEO Kenneth Melani speaks by television to those attending the reopening ceremony.
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West Penn Hospital's emergency room department reopens at 8 a.m. today, featuring a renovated entry, 23 patient beds, a fast-track triage system and several technology upgrades, including a state-of-the-art CT scanner coming next month.
The reopening is a direct byproduct of the planned affiliation between insurer Highmark Inc. and the West Penn Allegheny Health System. Highmark president and CEO Kenneth Melani, who did his medical residency at West Penn, said at Monday's announcement that the plan is "to make West Penn Hospital all that it can be and all that it should be."
That was good news to Aggie Brose, deputy director of the Bloomfield-Garfield Corp., one of the neighborhood groups that had lobbied to keep West Penn a full-service hospital.
"This is a very joyous day for the neighborhood," she said. "There is something unique about the love and care you get at West Penn."
Although not in attendance at Monday's announcement, the owners of restaurants and other nearby businesses should benefit, too, Ms. Brose said, as West Penn's growing staff stops by for lunch or just to shop. "This is a lifeline to the businesses on Liberty Avenue, and I think they were starting to hurt very much."
Thomas Campbell, who heads emergency medicine for the West Penn Allegheny Health System and was the medical director of West Penn's emergency department for more than 20 years, said he was delighted with the renovated emergency medicine area. It was his job to oversee the department's closure in December 2010 as part of a consolidation and restructuring initiative.
"It was one of the saddest days of my career," he said. Had Highmark not stepped in last June, the WPAHS board was prepared to close the Bloomfield campus.
Now based at Allegheny General, Dr. Campbell said he will be seeing patients at West Penn again. On July 1, the West Penn emergency department will have a new director, Bruce A. MacLeod, who is currently on staff at UPMC Mercy. Dr. MacLeod was chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Mercy from 1993 to 2010.
First Published February 14, 2012 12:00 am
