Phoebe’s Community Care Clinic has been an amazing success in its first year.  The clinic opened on March 1, 2016, directly across the street from Phoebe’s Emergency Center with a mission to increase access to care, save money for patients and reduce wait times in the EC. “Phoebe’s Community Care Clinic met or exceeded our goals for year one and proved to be a tremendous benefit to our patients,” said Laura Shearer, Senior Vice President, Operations.

The clinic serves patients with non-life threatening illnesses or injuries who need prompt attention but who do not require emergency care.  Do you have a fever or a severe sore throat?  Did you sprain your ankle on the tennis court or cut yourself working in the yard and need a few stitches?  The Community Care Clinic is the right place for you at the right time for the right cost.

In its first year, the clinic treated more than 13,000 cases.  Those patients would have spent $13.4 million more for the same treatment in the Emergency Center.  Emergent care requires 24-hour access to a full staff of emergency medicine professionals and advanced technologies.  “The Emergency Center is the highest-cost point of access for care,” said Shearer.  “Often, patients who show up in our EC don’t truly need that level of care.  Through our Community Care Clinic, Phoebe can now offer the appropriate level of care more quickly and more affordably.”

Respiratory infections are one of the most common illnesses our providers see in the Community Care Clinic.  The average charge to one of those patients in the clinic is $122.83.  The average EC charge for a patient with a respiratory infection is $1,187.28.

The Emergency Center at Phoebe’s main campus is one of the busiest in Georgia.  Typically, annual visits exceeded 60,000.  In the year since the Community Care Clinic opened, that number dropped to 54,000, and the average wait time to see a doctor dropped from 88 minutes in March 2016 to 52 minutes in January 2017.