Baptist Health bringing hybrid emergency room and urgent care clinic to Southern Indiana

Mar. 10—SOUTHERN INDIANA — Baptist Health has partnered with Dallas-based Intuitive Health to bring the first hybrid emergency room and urgent care clinic to Southern Indiana. The new facility will be located in the Jefferson Ridge development near the intersection of Interstate 265 and Indiana 62 in Jeffersonville, according to a news release issued by Baptist Health.

"We are excited to partner with a leader in care innovation to bring this new facility to fruition," said Michael Schroyer, president of Baptist Health Floyd. "There's been tremendous growth in the River Ridge area and we want to establish this emergency and urgent care model to complement the primary care, occupational medicine and physical therapy location that we have located a few miles away. We want to bring the same level of quality patient care that our community has come to know from Baptist Health Floyd."

Since 2008, Texas-based Intuitive Health has partnered with established health systems nationwide to build, operate, launch and retain healthcare facilities that provide urgent care and emergency room services under one roof. The dual emergency and urgent care facilities eliminate the need for patients to self-diagnose the severity of their health concerns before selecting the most appropriate medical center for care. The new patient-centered model is designed to simplify the way patients access immediate, appropriate care while also lowering out-of-pocket costs.

"Our vision as an organization is to simplify how patients access care. For too long patients have had to decide between emergency and urgent care without medical guidance. If they chose the emergency room, but only needed urgent care, they may have faced an unnecessarily large expense. If they chose urgent care but needed life-saving emergency care, then they put their health at risk. We are excited to partner with Baptist Health to bring a new option to Clark County — now patients no longer need to choose. We promise the right care at the right price close to home," said Thom Herrmann, CEO of Intuitive Health.

Baptist Health ER and Urgent Care, will have a full-service ER open 24 hours a day, and an urgent care open 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. seven days a week. Each facility is equipped with on-site lab equipment, a radiology suite with X-ray and multi-slice CT scanners and staffed with board-certified, ER-licensed physicians. The ER physician examines each patient and determines if the appropriate care is emergent or urgent care. Patients are billed accordingly, only paying for the level of care they need, which eliminates unnecessary emergency room visits.

Some key features include:

—Commitment to billing transparency. No surprise bills.

—The facility will be in-network with most major insurance plans and accepts Medicare and Medicaid.

—Patients only pay for the necessary level of care they receive.

—Before treatment even begins, patients are informed if they will be treated as an urgent care patient or as an emergency room patient, in which additional consent is needed.

—Over 70% of patients can be treated and billed at the urgent care level.

"The hybrid emergency room and urgent care clinic is just one example of the kind of 'next-generation' health care Baptist Health wants to bring to its communities," said Baptist Health Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer Jody Prather, MD. "We never lose sight of what's most important to our patients — in this instance, convenience and a great patient experience — combined with the quality of care our patients have come to expect. It's all about providing the right level of care at the right location, right here in Southern Indiana."

Intuitive Health's philosophy is built on a patient-centric perspective and each patient is "wowed" at every point in their journey — consistently exceeding their customer service expectations.

Each staff member is trained in servant leadership with the primary objective to serve patients.

Little to no wait times. Most urgent care patients are back in their cars and on their way within 45 minutes.

Based on research, urgent care hours are much earlier and later than most competitor facilities.

ER is open 24/7/365.

Walk-ins are welcome. For convenience, online pre-registration is available.

Facilities are clean, warm and welcoming. All locations have an area designed just for children.

Utilizing a platform that relies on a system partially developed at Harvard, known as the Net Promoter Score (NPS), allows Intuitive Health to track the performance through the customer's eyes at each location. Intuitive Health facilities have some of the highest NPS scores in the healthcare industry.

The combined ER and urgent care model at Intuitive Health is designed to simplify how patients access immediate, quality appropriate care while lowering their out of pocket costs.

Every patient is examined by a board-certified and ER-licensed physician every single visit, regardless of the level of care they need.

All nursing staff comes from the traditional ER setting.

Onsite imaging is staffed by a technologist 24 hours a day.

The model provides pediatric and adult patients easy access to quality care 365 days a year.

Each location treats everything a hospital emergency room treats, from allergies to appendicitis.

Patients receive the same level of care received at a hospital while saving time and money.

The combined ER and Urgent Care model optimizes the patient journey from the facility design to each process that results in better outcomes.

If a patient does need to be transferred to Baptist Health Floyd for surgery, transport arrangements are made and the patient goes straight into the hospital operating room, bypassing the hospital ER.

More information about Baptist Health Floyd is available at BaptistHealth.com/Floyd. More information about Intuitive Health is available at www.iheruc.com.