(photo by Erin O. Smith)
By: John Howser
The Vanderbilt Health Acute Care Center, located on the One Hundred Oaks (OHO) campus, is now open.
The new center was established to meet the needs of an increasing number of patients who do not feel sick enough to require an emergency department visit but would benefit from quick access to a specialist’s assessment and advanced diagnostics in case intervention is needed to prevent their condition from worsening.
Access to the new center’s services is limited to existing adult Vanderbilt Health patients referred by Vanderbilt Health clinicians. The center will not accept walk-up patients or referrals from providers outside the Vanderbilt Health system.
“Often, our physicians need their patients to receive an acute workup for something urgent but that is not necessarily an emergency,” said Jane Freedman, MD, Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Chief Health System Officer for Vanderbilt Health. “Currently, the easiest option has been to send patients to the emergency department. We hope this new center will provide an intermediate option so that our patients can receive these services in a timely manner and in a setting other than the ED.”
Staffed by Emergency Medicine physicians and nurses, the Acute Care Center offers patients an additional option by utilizing a newly acquired lab analyzer and existing diagnostic equipment already in place at OHO.
“In addition to rapid growth in the number of patients who seek treatment in our emergency departments, our health system manages an enormous number of medically complex patients, such as those with rare diseases and organ transplants, or who are actively receiving care for cancer, have recently had complex surgeries, or who have multiple comorbidities,” said Stephan Russ, MD, MPH, Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine and Senior Executive Medical Director of Vanderbilt LifeFlight.
Russ led the effort to open the new center in conjunction with Nate Miller, MD, MMHC, Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine and Vice Chair of Regional Emergency Services for the Department of Emergency Medicine.
“The rapid advancement in U.S. health care delivery has unintentionally created a care gap for this increasingly complex patient population who find themselves without access to rapid, advanced diagnostic options other than visiting emergency rooms when they become suddenly ill,” said Miller.
“This population is left with a difficult and often confusing decision on whether to seek care immediately or risk waiting and potentially decompensating. We are extremely excited to be working with a multidisciplinary group to give this growing, intermediate acuity population a convenient, affordable, less intimidating and diagnostically rich care option for early intervention and risk stratification.”
The center’s lab is capable of rapidly performing such tests as high sensitivity troponin or quantitative d-dimer.
“Our Walk-In and urgent care locations do an outstanding job serving the patient populations that they do,” he said. “This center is for our medically complex patients but can also be utilized by our clinicians for patients who they feel will benefit from rapid access to this level of care in between a traditional clinic’s on-site capabilities and an emergency department visit. The goal is to offer our providers and patients another option to receive an acute, expedited workup. We will work together with referring clinicians to come up with patients’ treatment plans.”
- The new Acute Care Center is located within OHO’s Primary Care North clinic and will initially be open from 2 p.m. until 10 p.m., Monday-Friday. There is potential for these hours to expand if there is a high demand for services, Russ said.
- A LifeFlight ground ambulance is on-site at OHO for patients who are identified as needing transportation for inpatient admission.
- Vanderbilt Health clinicians can refer their patients to the Acute Care Center by calling the Transfer Center or can schedule patient appointments through Cadence within Epic.
- Vanderbilt Health One Hundred Oaks is at 719 Thompson Lane. Entrances nearest to the Primary Care North/Acute Care Center are Entrance G, at the rear of the complex, and Entrance E, on the front/retail side of the facility.
