UF Health Jacksonville and Intuitive Health marked a major milestone today in their initiative to bring a unique style of emergency care to Jacksonville, celebrating the construction progress of three hybrid emergency room and urgent care centers.
At today’s construction celebration at one of the new facilities on New Kings Road, UF Health Jacksonville announced the first patient will be seen at that location in October. The two other centers are on Lane Avenue, which will see its first patient in November, and off Baymeadows Road, which will open in December.
The project is being developed in partnership with Dallas-based Intuitive Health. Jacksonville is the third location in the state that will host the hybrid model. Intuitive Health has similarly affiliated facilities in the southeastern and northwestern parts of the state, but the UF Health centers will be the first in the northeast area of Florida.
“We are thrilled at the progress of these three centers that will change the delivery of health care in the community,” said Russ Armistead, CEO of UF Health Jacksonville. “We believe this new hybrid concept will bring not only high-quality care, but will also keep costs down by offering two options of care under one roof.”
The centers will have a full-service ER open 24 hours a day, and an urgent care center open in the same building seven days a week. Each facility will be equipped with on-site lab equipment and a radiology suite with X-ray and multi-slice CT scanners, and will be staffed with board-certified, ER-licensed physicians. An ER physician will examine each patient when they arrive and determine the appropriate level of care.
“Our emergency physicians and health care teams are excited to see the progress of these new centers, which will give us the opportunity to serve even more residents across Jacksonville and Northeast Florida,” said Andy Godwin, M.D., FACEP, chair of the department of emergency medicine for the University of Florida College of Medicine – Jacksonville. “These are going to be state-of-the-art facilities that will help take the guesswork out for patients on whether to go to an emergency room or urgent care center, so they can spend time getting the critical care they need.”
Key features of the hybrid concept are a commitment to billing transparency with no surprise bills. Patients will only pay for the level of care they receive, and estimates say more than 70% of patients can be treated at the urgent care level. The facilities will also accept most insurance plans, along with Medicare and Medicaid.
About UF Health Jacksonville
UF Health Jacksonville (UFHealthJax.org) is a private, not-for-profit hospital, part of University of Florida Health, a world-class academic health center that combines leading-edge research at campuses around Florida with outstanding clinical care at a network of hospitals around the state. In Jacksonville, UF Health includes University of Florida faculty, residents and fellows within the UF College of Medicine – Jacksonville, who team up with outstanding caregivers and other employees to provide state-of-the-art services to residents throughout Northeast Florida and Southeast Georgia. Our mission is to heal, to comfort, to educate and to discover, in an environment where exemplary medical care complements outstanding service.
About Intuitive Health
Founded in 2008, Intuitive Health pioneered the combined emergency room and urgent care model. Intuitive Health partners with established health systems nationwide to build, operate and launch retail health care facilities that provide urgent care and emergency room services under one roof. Current partners include Baptist Health Care in Pensacola, Florida; Baptist Health in Kentucky; Northwest Health in Arkansas; Presbyterian Healthcare Services in New Mexico; HonorHealth in Arizona; ProMedica in Ohio; Riverview Health in Indiana; UF Health Jacksonville in Florida and its flagship center, Legacy ER & Urgent Care, with six locations in the Dallas – Fort Worth area. Intuitive Health's patient-centered retail-care model is built on a proven business system focused on concierge-level customer service and transparency. Each facility has onsite lab equipment, a radiology suite with X-ray and multi-slice CT scanners and are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Every patient is examined by a board-certified and ER-licensed physician, regardless of the level of care they need. As an objective criterion, the physician determines if the appropriate care is emergent or urgent care. Patients are billed accordingly, only paying for the care they require which eliminates inappropriate emergency room utilization. This proven model establishes a cost-effective, more personal and time-efficient way to deliver high-quality medical service at the appropriate cost which garners long-term patient loyalty. The Intuitive Health model increases market share for partnered health care systems by expanding their footprint with conveniently located centers. For more information, please visit iheruc.com.
Featured Faculty
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Steven A. Godwin, MD, FACEP
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Chair, Department of Emergency Medicine; Assistant Dean, Simulation Education; Program Director, Patient Safety Fellowship