Mount St. Mary’s unveils new clinic
Neighborhood center will serve more people
Published: July 22, 2009, 12:30 am
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NIAGARA FALLS — As the growth in housing continues in the North End, Mount St. Mary’s Hospital unveiled an aggressive plan for a new, free-standing, larger health clinic Tuesday.
The hospital broke ground for a $1.3 million Neighborhood Health Care Center at the corner of Ninth Street and Profit Lane.
The clinic is expected to open in six months and will replace the current center in the Doris W. Jones Family Resource Building, which, according to Housing Authority Director Stephanie Cowart, is “bursting at the seams.”
In the past year, the current 3,000-square-foot clinic saw 9,779 patients in six examination rooms in the Housing Authority building. The new Neighborhood Health Care Center will be located across the parking lot and will be 6,500 square feet, have 12 exam rooms and be able to accommodate 15,000 patients or more a year, adding a third family practice physician to the clinic.
Mount St. Mary’s President and CEO Judith Maness said they opened the center in the Niagara Falls Housing Authority in 1992 as a part-time pediatric center, a few days a week, with a couple of rooms and anticipated 16 patients a day.
“It has been reconfigured numerous times to accommodate the growing pains. We used to have waiting rooms and educational space, and we took over all of that,” Maness told The Buffalo News.
She said the Hope IV Housing project was a big part of plans for this new project.
Cowart agreed, noting that with 115 units coming in Phase I and a total of 280 units by 2011, health care was “critically important.”
The new health center will be open five days a week and have pediatricians, family practice, OB/GYN and, in the future, dental services, Maness said.
Maness said the building is a simple brick structure with an aggressive construction schedule.
“We wanted light, simplicity and the money to spend inside,” she told The News. “If we can get the building up, most work can be done inside in the colder weather,” she said.
Preventive medicine is a big reason why a health care center/ clinic is a much better choice in a neighborhood. Maness said residents also establish a relationship with a doctor.
Assemblywoman Francine DelMonte, D-Niagara Falls, said the Niagara Falls clinic, started in 1992, was “ahead of the curve” because there was nothing like it in Niagara County.
“In Buffalo, clinics are fairly common, but here they are a rarity. The clinic is not only serving people in the entire North End, but from what I understand people are coming here from Sanborn and Cambria. This is the future of health care.
“The State of New York is trying to change the dynamic of health care, not only in Niagara County, but throughout the state, and the emphasis will be on primary care, so they don’t have long term and much more costly long-term care,” Del- Monte said.
DelMonte said this clinic will be the model, and though it is the first, it won’t be the last. She stressed that patients should not be going to more costly emergency rooms for primary care.
Betty Holland, one of the first patients at the Housing Authority clinic, said she would go to the emergency room and wait for hours before the center became available in her neighborhood.
“We must provide access, compassion and faith regardless of people’s ability to pay. We must dig deep to lift up this community,” Cowart said.
Mayor Paul A. Dyster said health care costs have reached a crisis.
“What we need is for families to be proactive and to seek out the most cost-effective health care in their neighborhood. We are committed to having people live in this neighborhood and rebuilding. Everything that we are doing today suggests that we are moving in a positive direction,” Dyster said.
Major sources of funding for the Mount St. Mary’s Neighborhood Health Center were provided by City of Niagara Falls Department of Community Development, John R. Oishei Foundation in Buffalo, Grigg- Lewis Foundation in Lockport, Fidelis Care, DelMonte, Mount St. Mary’s Foundation and State Sen. Antoine Thompson.
nfischer@buffnews.com
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