Ribbon Cut On Long Wharf Primary Care Hub

Top administrators and clinicians from Yale New Haven Hospital, Fair Haven Community Health Care, and Cornell Scott Hill Health Center celebrated Monday the fruits of a years-in-the-making local healthcare partnership: The completion of a new ​“one-stop shop” primary care hub at 150 Sargent Dr. on Long Wharf.

They held that ribbon cutting and press conference Tuesday afternoon under a tent set up in the back parking lot of the newly renovated, jointly run medical center.

The consolidated Long Wharf site, which officially opens to patients next Monday, will host three sets of primary care services—adult medicine, women’s care, and pediatrics.

All three of those services have been relocated from YNHH’s York Street, St. Raphael’s, and Hamden campuses.

While YNHH’s primary care doctors, nurses, support staff, and residents will all be moving with their practices over to Long Wharf starting Monday, the three primary care services will be officially run by the city’s two federally qualified community health centers: Cornell Scott Hill Health Center, which will oversee the adult and women’s care programs, and Fair Haven Community Health Care, which will oversee pediatrics.

The two-story, 52,000-plus square-foot medical building is also now home to YNHH’s radiology and blood draw services.

YNHH Vice President of Operations Cynthia Sparer said Tuesday that the three relocated primary care services typically see roughly 90,000 visits a year by roughly 25,000 mostly low-income patients.

She also said that the the refurbished 150 Sargent Dr. site cost around $37 million to build out to accommodate its new primary care hub use.

Fair Haven Community Health Care CEO Suzanne Lagarde (pictured) said during the presser that the conversations among the three local healthcare providers about a potential primary care partnership first started in March 2015.

That’s when she, Taylor, and Sparer first started asking themselves ​“What if?” questions, Lagarde said.

“What if the three organizations came together to provide care to New Haven’s most vulnerable?

“What if we worked together to impact population health metrics for the tens of thousands of low-income patients already being cared for by our three organizations?

“What if we were able to augment the training program for literally thousands of pediatric, medical and women’s health trainees with an experience that addressed the unique challenges of caring for populations burdened with poverty, food insecurity, housing instability and so on?”

The result, she said, is the renovated medical office building soon to open at 150 Sargent Dr. as well as the center’s tripartite managing partnership, formally dubbed the New Haven Primary Care Consortium (NHPCC).

Sparer (pictured) said that each of the three primary care services now located at the Long Wharf site will have behavioral health specialists embedded alongside medical care providers. And Lagarde said that that all three healthcare partners will be using one shared electronic medical record via the EPIC platform for their patients.

“We know of no other municipality in this country that can boast of having this sort of arrangement where the most vulnerable residents are all on a shared electronic platform,” Lagarde said. ​“This is powerful. The opportunities for population health and cost savings are truly endless.”

Lagarde also praised the site’s integration of YNHH’s residency and training program as taking a ​“giant step towards ensuring that the next generation of medical leaders will embrace our model of care and the critical role academia once played in serving vulnerable populations.”

Taylor (pictured) was similarly enthusiastic about the launch of the new primary care hub after so many years of planning and investment.

“There was no roadmap,” he said. ​“We created this from vision. From tenacity. And I’m very grateful to my partners for demonstrating that.”

One of the most hotly contest parts of the primary care hub plan during the state’s regulatory review of the proposal last year was the Long Wharf site’s relative inaccessibility for patients who do not have their own cars.

In its Aug. 2019 decision on YNHH’s request for a certificate of need (CON) required for the hospital to close its current primary care services and move them to 150 Sargent Dr., the state Office of Health Strategy (OHS) imposed a number of transportation-related conditions on its approval.

Those conditions, which can be read in full here, included YNHH providing free transportation services to current primary care patients who live within 10 miles of Sargent Drive, whose trip to Sargent Drive would take 40 minutes or more on public transit, and who do not have access to a private vehicle. They also included YNHH contracting with Coordinated Transportation Solutions, Uber, and Milford Transit District to transport patients to and from the new primary care hub.

When asked about the site’s transportation plan for patients on Tuesday, Sparer said that one of the site’s biggest accessibility assets for patients is its 250 parking spots, which are all free for its patients to use. She said the surface parking lot eliminates the need to pay for a spot at a parking garage downtown, or to pay for street parking and then walk several city blocks to get to the point of care.

She said the Long Wharf site also has a public bus stop nearby, that people who need medical transport will still have access to that service, and that the hospital has signed contracts with supplemental ride programs — such as Uber — to provide another option for those who do not have a car.

“Every patient has received a personal letter,” she said, letting them know about the relocation of the primary care services to Long Wharf.

Previous articles about the proposed New Haven Primary Care Consortium:

• Plan Reimagines Primary Care For Poor
• State Approves Primary Care Move
• Primary Plan’s Obstacle: Broken Bus System
• Primary Care Move Delayed To 2020
• Flood-Proofing Promised For Primary Care Site
• YNHH Reshuffles St. Ray’s Campus
• Primary Care Plan: Shuttle Out, Uber In
• Farwell Questions Primary Care Move’s Impact On Poor
• West River Questions Primary Care Move
• Harp Backs Primary Care Move
• Primary Care Hub Wins Key City Sign Off

Click on the Facebook Live video below to watch Tuesday’s press conference.