Submitted on behalf of Dr. David E. Newman and Dr. Erin Hall-Rhoades.
As previously noted in an Intercom article from April 2008, 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 offer our usual broad range of primary care services, including sports medicine, women's health, urgent and nonurgent care of acute and chronic illnesses, immunizations, allergy shots, and prescriptions. In addition, we will implement:
- 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 nonurgent transport to the Cayuga Medical Center emergency room or the Convenient Care Center. Included in this service is the ability to charge the fare directly to the student's 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 currently, 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 also 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.
