Sturdy Memorial’s Emergency Department Celebrating 40 Year Anniversary

 This September marks the 40th anniversary of the opening of the new Emergency Department at Sturdy Memorial Hospital. In the late 1970’s, Sturdy’s old Emergency Department was seeing more patients than the space was intended to accommodate. The current facility opened in 1979 and was built to serve more patients with additional treatment rooms, larger waiting areas and quiet rooms, and added surgical and orthopedic areas.

“To accommodate the transition to the new space and to provide continuum of care to our patients, we ran two emergency rooms during the early evening hours,” said Dr. Mike Fabrizio, Sturdy physician who has been with the hospital since 1976. “I was honored to be the physician to see the last patient in the old emergency room, and as I recall, after the last patient, we shut off the lights in the old space and took what we needed over to the rest of our staff who were already working in the new space.”

Pamela Lange, Clinical Coordinator in the Emergency Department, remembers the transition from the old space to the new facility. She said, “The old emergency room was where the Surgical Day Center is now. The space was small compared to the building that we moved into and we had to hire more nurses due to the size of the department.” Lange has been with Sturdy over forty years and in that time has witnessed many changes. “The patient population has changed and continues to grow. I’ve taken care of patients that have brought their children in and now their grandchildren.”

Sturdy Memorial Hospital’s Emergency Department (ED), previously known as the Emergency Care Center (ECC), is open 24 hours a day, and treats close to 50,000 visits annually. For more information about Sturdy, the ED, or the Quick Care service, visit www.sturdymemorial.org.