Inside the Summit County ERs that treat thousands of skiing injuries every season
At St. Anthony Summit Hospital in Frisco alone, nearly half of emergency room visits come from five nearby ski areas.
Hugh Carey/The Colorado Sun
Marc Doucette started working in the emergency department at the St. Anthony Summit Medical Center in 2005, when about 11,000 patients a year would pass through the emergency room.
Now, the annual traffic through the Level 3 Frisco emergency department is closer to 16,500. Anywhere from a third to half of those come from nearby ski areas: Arapahoe Basin, Breckenridge, Copper Mountain, Keystone and Loveland. The now CommonSpirit St. Anthony Summit Hospital runs emergency and urgent care clinics at the base of Breckenridge, Copper Mountain and Keystone.
The Level 1 emergency clinic at Breckenridge can see 100 patients a day when the resort is busy. Keystone and Copper Mountain clinics see 20-to-30 patients a day.
“Our volumes have trended upward,” says Doucette, a fast-talking emergency medicine doctor – and avid skier – who keeps his hospital-issued mobile phone in his hand as he hustles between rooms.
Dr. Clarice Sage is the medical director of the three CommonSpirit Health base-area mountain clinics. Breckenridge, the most visited ski area in the country, sees visits spike during holidays, with about 40% of its patients coming from the ski area and 60% are visitors and locals with urgent medical issues. Keystone is the second busiest of the three followed by the emergency center at the base of Copper Mountain. The Copper clinic sees closer to 60% of its patients injured on the ski area. And those injuries at Copper are “high acuity,” Sage says, with more intense trauma.
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