Kettering Health $20M Springfield emergency facility opens today

Credit: Bill Lackey

Credit: Bill Lackey

Kettering Health Network is scheduled to open a $20 million emergency center in Springfield — the healthcare giant’s third and most significant investment in the area — this afternoon, although it won’t start immediately accepting patients.

The Kettering Health Springfield medical center is housed in a 42,000 square foot building that was a Kroger grocery store until three years ago. The facility, located on 2300 N. Limestone St., will be a 24-hour fully functioning emergency center with 70 new jobs, Kettering officials said. It will feature 14 emergency beds for treatments such as trauma and behavioral health, imaging, lab services and office space for outpatient primary care.

Kettering purchased the building for $2.2 million shortly after the Kroger closed in 2019.

The new facility is expected to start receiving patients on April 27, said Ervin Gruia, the director of strategy and operations for Kettering Health Springfield.

“We always want to go into a community that is seeking us out. That is what this community has done through the increasing number of patients we have been seeing coming to (Kettering Health),” Gruia said, noting that Kettering Health had also received request to bring services closer to home from some of those patients.

Kettering Health Springfield is opening at a time when a number of emergency centers — both freestanding and hospital-attached — have been added to the region in recent years.

Those include Kettering Healthemergency centers in both Piqua and Troy over the past three years. Prior to that, the network opened an emergency room in Middletown as part of a new medical center, as well as added emergency centers in Franklin and Huber Heights.

Mercy Health, which operates the Springfield Regional Medical Center and the Urbana Hospital, opened an emergency center in Enon in 2019.

Kettering Health Springfield represents the latest endeavor in Clark County for the health network that already has a large presence in the Dayton area.

Kettering Health entered the Springfield market in 2017, and since then has expanded its services and physicians network in the area. Those services include specialties such as cardiology, women services, physical therapy and orthopedics. Now, it will offer emergency care.

Kettering Health operates hospitals in the greater Dayton area, including the Soin Medical Center in Beavercreek.

The health network’s two other locations in Springfield include the Kettering Health Springfield Health Center on Emmanuel Way that opened in April 2018 and Kettering Physician Network Springfield Center Primary Care on Middle Urbana Road.

The latter was an independent private practice that had operated in the area for more than 30 years before merging with Kettering Health in December 2018. That location offers primary care and lab services.

Kettering Health currently has 10 physicians and advanced practice providers, and 23 staff members that rotate between those two locations, said Michelle Day, a spokesperson for the health network.

New positions that will be added as a result of Kettering Health Springfield will include entry level positions, environmental services, nutritional services as well as imaging technologist, registered nurses and new physicians, Gruia said.

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