McMorries likes using all of his knowledge to treat patients in new Hartselle ER

Imagine you’re plowing a field in Eva and feel a little chest pain. Was it just the Mexican food you had for lunch? Or something more serious?

If the idea of driving an hour for emergency care seems intimidating, you can now get checked close to home in Hartselle instead.

Cullman Regional’s freestanding emergency department opened in January at the hospital’s Hartselle Health Park.

In an era when Alabama’s rural health care system is struggling, residents of southern Morgan County and surrounding areas can now receive the same care that hospital-based ERs provide, around the clock. Hartselle Health Park has 10 treatment rooms including one for trauma victims, plus a helipad and imaging capabilities that include X-ray, CT and ultrasound.

If patients need to be transferred for inpatient care, a paramedic crew stands ready.

The idea of a freestanding emergency room is fairly new, said Jennifer Malone, Cullman Regional’s assistant vice president of marketing communications, and is a great service for communities that don’t have their own hospital.

Stroke and heart patients in particular can benefit from convenient access to fast treatment, she said.

“There are things that can be done in our ER that help them have better outcomes and save brain tissue and save heart tissue,” Malone said.

A visit might even reveal an undiagnosed issue or something that can be addressed early.

“A lot of times you end up finding stuff that prevents things from happening in the future,” said Hartselle emergency room physician Dr. Ryan McMorries.

Texas native McMorries went to the University of Mississippi, then medical school at the University of Texas, followed by residencies at Ole Miss and LSU. You could say McMorries ended up in Alabama through marriage. The doctor married a woman from Mississippi whose sister married someone from Hartselle.

“My job before here was out in Hawaii,” said McMorries, 40. “During COVID things kind of went a little crazy, so the wife wanted to be near family and told me I was going to be moving to Hartselle,” he said with a laugh.

McMorries has no regrets. He loves north Alabama.

“Just the space, the nature. When you’re in Hawaii, it’s a beautiful place, but there’s not a whole lot of opportunities to have your own place and have some land,” he said. “It’s always been a dream of ours to have a little farm.”

Living in Morgan County

The couple found their ideal property in Falkville, where they are learning to take care of animals by raising cows and goats. They started a garden last year, too.

“We’re just enjoying being outside with our kids,” he said. “That’s the dream.” “It’s a party” raising their three boys, ages 8, 5 and 1, he joked.

McMorries intentionally chose to specialize in emergency medicine, and is board certified in that and family medicine. People often ask why he opted for that specialty, which seems stressful to say the least.

“In medical school, you rotate through everything. You’re in the operating room, you’re in the clinics, you’re delivering babies, you kind of do a whole host of stuff, so you kind of figure out what area you like to be in,” he said.

As for those who gravitate to the ER, “I don’t know if we just love chaos or what it says about our personality, but I think what it comes down to is we enjoy the unknown, the newness of it.

“Controlled chaos is what we call it.” The emergency room environment is a little like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.

“You’re definitely not in a routine. It can be simple, or complicated, to crazy. You get so used to using everything you’ve ever learned – all your knowledge.” For the last 10 years, McMorries has been working 12-hour night shifts.

“I enjoyed the night team, but now I’m finally a day guy” at the new Hartselle ER, he said, “not a vampire anymore.”

ER excitement

People naturally ask him to tell interesting stories about his experiences in emergency rooms.

“You can’t imagine the chaos we see,” he said, like severed fingers, different kinds of trauma, gunshots, heart attacks, broken bones, snake bites and more. He has delivered “plenty of elevator babies.” “There’s no telling what you’re going to get in the ER. I think that’s part of what makes it addicting,” he said. “The problem with doing ER is that once you start doing it, it’s hard to do another job. And that’s probably the same for most of my nurses too, and techs.

“Once you kind of get used to the chaos, it’s hard to leave here and go do a clinic. You just can’t.” McMorries has been an emergency room doctor for 10 years, four of those in Alabama. He said a typical ER doctor sees about 24 patients a day, but in busy ERs, physicians can treat 40 to 50.

“But we have a lot of help,” he said. “In a really busy ER, say Huntsville or UAB, you can have five, six docs on at the same time,” he said. “And our rural ER, you tend to be the provider or the only physician, and then with a lot of help and support.” Based on its popularity so far, the new ER seems to be just the medicine the community needed.

Patient volume “has been very strong and actually exceeded what our expectations were and our projections were when we opened a little less than a month ago,” said Malone.

McMorries added, “this community has desperately needed an emergency room. We are busy and that is a good thing.” Patients are coming from throughout the region.

“When you have a place you can be seen quickly, it definitely makes a huge difference,” McMorries said. “We wish we had that at every ER you work at. We wish there were no wait times for everyone. It is just that ERs and hospitals are extremely busy. You don’t have enough of them. We don’t have enough providers and emergency rooms.” Free-standing clinics give fine care, he said, but if someone is a little too sick for that option, it’s nice to be seen without a long wait.

“A lot of people don’t want to call 911 or an ambulance. They just want to drive somewhere and be seen.” There’s no doubt the new facility has saved lives.

“We’ve had a lot of really good saves here because we’re so close, it’s easy to get to and people come here and get checked out,” McMorries said.

“The most rewarding part of our job is just being able to provide the best possible care to anyone who comes through our doors no matter their income, status, race or problem – no matter how big or small it might be,” he said.

“It’s probably been the happiest I’ve ever been in my career is doing something like this. Everyone’s very excited. It’s been a pleasure to work here and take care of these people.

“Everyone is just so thankful.”