When people walk into the front entrance of St. Charles Medical Center sometime this summer, they may feel like they’ve stepped into a comfortable book store instead of a hospital.

They’ll be able to grab a cup of coffee or a healthy meal at a little cafe and then lounge around with the latest books on health care. A librarian will be available to answer questions. Nearby ”health coaches” will offer counseling.

In fact, people may change the way they use the hospital when workers finish building the 22,000-square-foot center taking shape at the front of St. Charles. Construction should wrap up later this spring and the center should open this summer with the grand opening slated for the fall, spokesman Todd Sprague said.

St. Charles will continue to offer acute care to the sick and injured, and those in need of immediate care can head straight to the emergency room. But those with time to linger will discover a variety of resources aimed at helping them live healthier lives.

”It’s all about self-care,” said Wendy Cuneo, team leader for the hospital’s Center for Health and Learning. ”We really believe in supporting people in health and wellness.”

Hospital officials chose to put the new center which will provide a resource center and offer space for classes and support groups in front of the building to signify their commitment to community wellness, said Lois Vallerga, vice president of education and development for the hospital.

”The intention here was to have it part of the entrance,” Vallerga said.

Before, she said, people noticed the emergency room first thing when they pulled up to the hospital.

The new center is part of a national trend in putting more resources in prevention and education to help fight disease at its earliest stages, to lower the risk of disease and to lower the cost of health care.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services launched a Healthy People 2010 initiative that encourages health promotion and disease prevention.

The initiative challenges health care organizations, as well as schools and communities, to focus more on education to improve the health of the nation in the next decade.

As a sign of this trend, numerous Web sites have popped up over the past few years encouraging people to become more involved in their health-care decisions. WebMD and Familydoctor.org, for example, offer self-care advisers to help people make health care decisions.

St. Charles turned its focus to self-care when it launched its Vision 2000 campaign in 1999. The hospital foundation raised $4 million to go along with $4 million in reserve money to build the Center for Health and Learning and to offer a 24-hour nurse advice line. Money raised also went to giving away 10,000 free self-care books at Deschutes County libraries and to launching a new Web site. All of those resources are intended to help cut back on unnecessary medical expenses and to help people make more informed decisions about seeking medical treatment.

Hospital officials focused their fund-raising efforts on education because they realize a lot of health problems ranging from diabetes to heart disease are related to such things as what and how much people eat and drink, how much they exercise and whether they smoke.

The thinking is, if the hospital can help people lead healthier lives and make better decisions about accessing health care, people can save themselves from expensive medical procedures.

Even though the new center has yet to open, the hospital has already launched many of its self-care programs. Some have been in place for several years, such as classes and support groups aimed at helping people make healthier decisions. It also works with a Seattle company to offer the 24-hour-a-day nurse advice line. The line is free to residents of Deschutes County. The emergency room directs callers with questions to registered nurses staffing the line.

The line helps people decide whether a health problem is serious enough to warrant an immediate visit to the ER or if an urgent care at a local clinic or their own physician can handle it at a later date. In its first year, from Nov. 1, 2000, to Oct. 31, 2001, nearly 5,000 people used the nurse line. A little more than 1,300 people called the line in the first quarter of the line’s second year.

Callers to the line are anonymous so it’s hard to track people after they hang up. But females accounted for the majority of the calls, about 62 percent in the first year and 74 percent in this past quarter. Many of these calls came from young mothers seeking advice for their children.

Statistics from the first year of the nurse line also show it saved 56 percent of the callers from making trips to the emergency room. Those callers planned to go to the ER but sought care from their primary physicians or urgent care instead.

Cuneo said she is pleased people, especially parents, are able to make better informed health care decisions.

”When children are sick, their outcomes are improved if parents are confident about their care decisions,” Cuneo said. ”What we’re wanting is for people to get the appropriate care at the appropriate time in a way they feel confident about their decisions.”

More people have called the nurse line than the hospital budgeted for, however, so she hopes money from an endowment fund can keep it in operation in the future. The line cost the hospital $35 per call in the first year, but the hospital negotiated a cheaper rate $25 per call in this second year.

Another self-care tool already in operation, the CareWise Web site launched by the hospital more than a year ago, offers free health advice online. The Web site, found at www.scmc.org, is managed by the same company that offers the nurse line and published the self-care book. It cost the hospital $40,000 in its first year and $15,000 in the second year. The site recorded about 5,000 hits in its first year.

The most popular feature on the Web site: A decision helper that gives people advice on specific health concerns. Also, a live feature available from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. allows people to chat with medical providers online.

Once the Center for Health and Learning opens, Cuneo said, the hospital will be able to better integrate all of the self-help tools. For example, people can access the CareWise Web site at the resource center and get help navigating the site.

With the increasing popularity of self-help tools, many people can find answers to health care questions on the Internet on their own. But the advantage with the hospital’s resources, hospital officials say, is that all the information released to consumers is screened by medical professionals to make sure it is accurate and responsible. Plus, there are no advertisements on the CareWise site.

And the Center for Health and Learning should help inspire people to pay more attention to their health and provide a one-stop shopping approach to finding the resources they need, said Vallerga, the St. Charles vice president for education.

”People have a desire to stay healthy,” Vallerga said. ”Once the desire exists, without the resources to help them do it, it’s pretty difficult.”

Rebecca Merritt can be reached by calling 541-383-0348 or by sending an email to Rebecca Merritt.