A holistic approach to caring for the whole patient, proactively, episodically and continuously, enhances the effectiveness of preventative measures and improves patient outcomes overall.
As a means to this end, the new Health & Wellness Center will also feature SBH’s first walk-in clinic, offered in partnership with ModernMD, an urgent care network serving federally designated primary care shortage areas across Brooklyn and Queens. This is ModernMD’s first clinic in the Bronx.
While urgent care has in many ways become synonymous with a sensible approach to level 1 care when primary care is unavailable, the luxury of episodic, everyday illness and injury treatment, seven days a week, no appointment necessary, has long been afforded only to more affluent markets across the country. Typically privately owned, equity-backed and targeting the commercially insured, most urgent care networks have innately disenfranchised underserved communities, perpetuating a lack of access to quick, convenient and high-quality non-acute care outside of the emergency room.
Here, SBH Urgent Care’s grand debut disrupts this common cycle of inequity, leveraging ModernMD’s mission-driven model of equalizing access to quick, convenient and high quality walk-in healthcare in largely Medicaid and Medicare markets, to encourage the community to seek the right care, in the right setting.
The benefits of incorporating urgent care into the care continuum of an established health system extend far beyond enhanced patient experience. In educating the patient population into seeking low acuity care in a lower cost environment, decanting of the ED comes organically – reducing cost to the system and strain on front-line providers, even more so notably in the wake of Covid care demand.
Conversely, urgent care access under the umbrella of SBH also drives immense growth and referral generation to primary and specialty care providers across the organization. Acting as an entry point to the overall care continuum in primary service areas, the consumerized appeal of urgent care access inevitably drives the acquisition of new patients, many of whom lack a designated primary care or pediatric provider for ongoing care and chronic condition management. This has long been a concern in this community. Similarly, given the prevalence of comorbidities in communities with care access challenges, initial encounters in an urgent care environment often reveal underlying conditions, catalyzing continuous referrals to in-network providers, facilitating seamless intranetwork care transition and improving both public health and public opinion of modern day care delivery.
Additionally, while a community focus endures, the merit of convenient walk in care right across from the campus is clear, offering immediate care access to SBH staff and their loved ones in the evenings and on weekends and holidays.
Just as the rapid growth of urgent care access has had a transformative effect on the episodic care delivery model, the SBH Health and Wellness Center seeks to be the physical culmination of innovation, integrity, excellence and equity.
