Submitted on behalf of Brian McAree, vice president for student affairs and campus life; and David Newman, M.D., director of health services.
To the Ithaca College Community:
When the fall semester begins this year, the Hammond Health Center will be open 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. Monday through Friday, and 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. This change in schedule will allow us to enhance certain services for students and to meet their needs even more effectively.
Two recent trends have strongly influenced our decision to shift our focus to daytime care: decreased after-hours utilization and increasing difficulty finding and retaining qualified night staff. Each year fewer students seek, or need, overnight care in a facility such as ours, so that we have questioned whether continuing to provide such care is the best use of our students' tuition dollars. At the same time, Cayuga Medical Center at Ithaca, our area hospital, has invested in a broad expansion of its emergency services, designed and built a truly state-of-the-art emergency room, and developed a hospitalist program that, taken as a whole, provide excellent care for students in emergencies and in need of hospitalization.
During the 90+ hours we are open each week, we will be offering our usual broad range of primary care services, including sports medicine, women's health, urgent and non-urgent care of acute and chronic illnesses, immunizations, allergy shots, and prescriptions. In addition, we will be implementing:
• Expanded weekday physician and physician-assistant availability for appointments and urgent visits, from the current 9:00 a.m.– 4:30 p.m. hours to 8:30 a.m.–6:00 p.m.
• Physician appointments on both Saturdays and Sundays
• Enhanced daytime RN staffing to reduce wait times and improve clinic flow
• 24-hour taxi service for students needing or desiring non-urgent transport to the Cayuga Medical Center emergency room or Convenient Care Center, with the ability to charge the fare directly to their bursar account, thereby eliminating the need to have cash on hand.
Health Center staff physicians and physician assistants will be on call after hours, as they are now, to communicate with the ER and with families in emergencies, and to promote continuity of care. Our MediCar service -- which provides free transportation to the hospital and Ithaca medical offices by appointment during regular weekday office hours -- will continue.
We are excited about the opportunities that these changes will create to further improve patient care, and are proud to continue providing services on a schedule that exceeds those of all other college and university health centers in the region by at least 48 percent.
https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/20080409154816341