Irvine Co. brings health clinic inside apartment complex
By Bernard J. Wolfson, The Orange County Register | |
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services |
But the facility, which opens Saturday, is a lot more than just a medical clinic.
The facility, on the main street of the Village, will offer not only basic medical services but also a wide selection of health and fitness programs, ranging from stress reduction and sleep improvement to nutritional counseling, an aquatic program -- even triathlon training.
The center will be open to all residents of the two apartment complexes, as well as to employees of the retail businesses located inside of them. It will be operated by employees of
The two companies plan to open a similar service later this year for the employees of businesses located at the Jamboree Center, an office complex also owned by the
"We are having discussions about how these opportunities look throughout our portfolio," said
The venture makes good business sense for both partners: St. Joseph Hoag has another avenue for selling its services and a pool of potential future patients for its physicians and hospitals.
The center, in close proximity to a
The center also reflects a growing focus on wellness and prevention, aimed at reducing health care costs by keeping more people healthy.
"Our members have come to trust us when they are sick and they need healing, but we need to be more than that," said
The idea of locating a clinic inside a residential community isn't totally novel, though it is unusual for the relatively younger and more upscale population that inhabits the Park and the Village. Monthly rents at the complexes range from
The federal government long has run similar programs in public housing projects, noted
"A lot of those programs in public housing are trying to improve health in a low-income neighborhood," Hansen-Turton said. "In this neighborhood, the strategy is different. It is to build a network of practice sites that feed into your health system and your primary care physician practices. It's a smart strategy."
For developers, health care offers another way to "program" their projects, said
"Do you put in a community garden or do you partner with a health care provider? It's a good way to differentiate the product," he said.
At the new wellness center at the Irvine Spectrum, residents will pay the same fees for medical care that they would at one of St. Joseph's urgent care centers in Fullerton, Walker said. And although some of the fitness and health maintenance programs will be complementary, many will carry fees that will vary depending on the activity and whether it is pursued in private sessions or in a group.
When the two companies open up the second "wellness corner" at the Jamboree Center later this year, they will have more of a precedent than they do for the residential one. Employers, conscious of containing health insurance costs, have been providing wellness programs for years.
Seventy-four percent of employers offer such programs in some form, according to a survey of employer-sponsored health benefits released Wednesday by the
Those programs range from health-related newsletters to smoking cessation, weight loss and gym membership, all the way to more comprehensive fitness health programs -- with primary care -- similar to what St. Joseph and the
The traditional role of employers was to provide coverage to help their workforce pay for care when they got sick, said
"In recent years, the employers have accepted an expanded role to move towards a culture of health," Kramer said. "The first phase of this was focused on their own employees -- to improve their employees' health through wellness programs. They have now moved on to advancing a culture of health in the community at large. This represents a breaking down of the silos so there is collaboration between physicians, hospitals and employers to advance health for the entire community."
St. Joseph has operated a similar center at its own corporate headquarters in Irvine for a year, including medical care, and the impact on employees has been striking, Walker said. It is open not only to St. Joseph employees but to everyone who works in the office complex, known as
Contact the writer: 714-796-2440 or [email protected]
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