TUNKHANNOCK, Pa. — Commonwealth Health announced the emergency room at its hospital outside Tunkhannock will close for good in just a few months. Residents are now wondering where they’ll go in the event of an emergency and how long it will take to get there.
July 1. That’s the day the emergency room at Commonwealth Health hospital, still known to residents as Tyler Memorial -- will officially close. A few miles down Route 6, we found people in Tunkhannock worried that the alternative emergency rooms are too far away.
"Either here or urgent care," said Connor Croc from Nicholson. "You’ve gotta go all the way down to Wilkes-Barre of Scranton."
"I don’t live in Tunkhannock, but I live closer another direction," said Liz from Wyoming County. "But if I was in Tunkhannock, I would wish I could go right up the street. It takes—it’s a lot longer. I would feel bad for those people."
"We need a hospital like that around," said Joe Hamedl from Tunkhannock. "Sometimes things you need don’t come to virtue, unfortunately."
Last year, Commonwealth Health announced the hospital would no longer offer emergency services, in-patient care, or surgeries, saying the space would be used as an urgent care by fall 2021.
The ER still appeared to be open when Newswatch 16 Monday afternoon, but its days are numbered.
The company says it “will remain in Tunkhannock with services the community has demonstrated it will use, such as primary care and occupational medicine.”
Hamedl said his girlfriend took a job at the hospital just five months ago
"If there’s no patients or there’s not enough patients, it doesn’t make sense economically to keep the building open," Hamedl said.
But Hamedl is still concerned about longer commute times. A five- or ten-minute drive to the closest ER will soon be 25 or 30 minutes, he said.
"There’s some people, I’m sure, some patients who are older than I am, and for an older patient to travel that far, it becomes cumbersome," he said.
"There’s old-folks’ homes around here too that are going to be impacted by it, as well," Croc said.
Commonwealth Health said its emergency medical services will remain at the hospital around the clock for transports as needed.
"If they have a heart attack, I don’t know what the plans are," Hamedl said. "How are they going to deal with something like that?"
The company will be pointing patients who need emergency care or surgeries to its hospitals in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre. Primary care offices in Tunkhannock will remain open.