But for the residents of Roxanne Simonson’s Cherry Street Guest Home, it’s going to be “especially traumatic,” she predicts.

“I just don’t understand it. That hospital has been there forever,” she says of the 62-bed Lancaster General Hospital – Susquehanna Division at 304 N. Seventh St.

Formerly called Columbia Hospital, it has been an institution in the western Lancaster County borough for 100 years.

Over at St. Peter Apartments at Fourth and Union streets, a staff member says a week rarely goes by when a resident doesn’t require a trip to the hospital.

Diane Gerfin, who oversees the apartment building where the average age is 68, says people “have always felt comfortable just knowing that the hospital is there. It seems like everybody has used it.”

But then came the announcement nearly three weeks ago that Lancaster General Hospital plans to close its Columbia Hospital by the end of June and convert it into an outpatient center.

Officials who run facilities for seniors, and the emergency personnel who take patients to hospital emergency rooms, say they’re going to be hit especially hard by the Columbia closing.

It will mean longer trips to the ER, more emergency calls and higher costs, they say.

For Susquehanna Valley Emergency Medical Services, the closure of Columbia’s emergency room at the end of June will mean longer trips to emergency rooms in Lancaster hospitals for the patients it transports.

And, that will have “a trickle-down effect,” says Mike Fitzgibbons, the EMS executive director.

Ambulances taking patients from Columbia to Lancaster will be out of service longer. That’s likely to increase the need for an additional ambulance for Columbia – so there will be more costs, Fitzgibbons says.

“And what was a five-to-10-minute trip before (to the Columbia hospital) now will be an hour, maybe an hour-and-15-minute turnaround,” he says.

He also fears that the number of 911 calls will increase without an ER in Columbia, and his service’s call volume “is going to go through the roof.”

But Fitzgibbons emphasizes he can sympathize with what LGH has to face in trying to keep the Columbia hospital open: “We understand, the way health care is going, that you certainly have to do what you can with the facilities that you have and the money that you’re given.”

LGH has said it is closing the hospital because of rising malpractice insurance costs as well as a decreasing patient load.

Fitzgibbons, has met with LGH officials, and it’s clear they understand the impact the ER’s loss will mean, but they just can’t get the specialists needed to keep facilities like Columbia’s open, Fitzgibbons says.

“With the trickle-down effect from something like this, the impact just keeps going and going and going. It’s going to be felt across a wide region,” including Marietta, Washington Boro and Wrightsville, he predicts.

Susquehanna Valley EMS, which covers the western part of the county, handles 500 calls for service each month, about 140 of them in Columbia.

Its Columbia station is the second-busiest of its five locations, and its ambulances average 120 to 150 trips a month to Columbia’s ER.

“They don’t understand that they’re taking a hospital away from a lot of people, and not just Columbia,” says Simonson, owner of the 30-resident guest home at 225 Cherry St.

Since the hospital is close by, it’s also easy to run over to the hospital to take hospitalized patients items they might need, she says.

At the St. Peter apartments, Gerfin estimates that 95 percent of the 135 residents have signed a petition opposing the hospital’s closing.