The imminent closing of Alachua General Hospital has some Levy County officials worried.

“I’m very concerned about the time it’s going to take to get a patient in.  It’s going to make us wait longer to get a bed,” Trish Seibold, Levy County Emergency Management Services director, said in a phone interview on Oct. 23.

Levy County EMS transports about 7,000 patients a year to emergency rooms located in several counties — with Alachua county hospitals being the most frequented, according to Seibold.

Shands is planning to open a new emergency room at its new cancer hospital the same day AGH closes on Sunday.  

But that still leaves only one other hospital in Alachua County with emergency medical facilities— North Florida Regional Hospital, she said.

Seibold said she’s been told by Shands that the new facility will be big enough to make up for the closing of AGH, but she said she was still worried because she had not been told if the new facility would increase its staff of emergency care workers.

If Shands does not add more staff to keep up with critical care cases, Seibold said, “We’re going to have to utilize Marion County a lot more. That’s a huge fear.”

Seibold said besides hospitals in Alachua and Marion Counties, Levy County EMS also takes patients to Nature Coast Regional Hospital, in Williston, and two hospitals in Citrus County.

Jeff Kelly, media relations coordinator for Shands, said he’s not sure if the new ER would add more staff.

    But he said the new facility would generate a “net gain in the number of treatment areas.”

    “We’re anticipating a reduction in wait times,” he said.

Kelly said the new facility, which can house about 1,000 critical care patients a year, has also been updated with the latest technology and has an “overflow” plan in case of a natural disaster or pandemic.

Karla Dass, a spokesperson for Williston’s Nature Coast Regional Hospital, said bigger and better facilities are good but mean little if Shands doesn’t have enough staff to keep up with patients seeking emergency care.

Dass said NCRH gets about 6,200 visits to its ER each year, but added that the hospital is not set up to deal with major trauma cases.

“The biggest thing is getting someone stabilized before having them transferred to Gainesville or Ocala,” she said.

She said transfers get into bigger hospitals without having to wait.

Dass also said NCRH is in the process of being bought out by a new management group that has plans to expand the Williston hospital’s range of services.

    “We’re hoping that one day, we’ll be able to treat our own patients.”