IMA mission Combining primary care with urgent care

Listen to this article

Is combining primary care and urgent care the answer to better health care in the age of the Affordable Care Act?

Integrated Medicine Alliance, a large Monmouth County primary care practice where more than three dozen clinicians have joined forces at nearly a dozen locations, feels it is.

So far, the Red Bank-based organization may be right: Last year, the group’s 40 clinicians clocked more than 110,000 patient visits, handling both their short-term and long-term needs.

William Febus, the chief executive, said the organization’s success is that it is both big and small.

Big in that IMA’s eight primary care offices and three urgent care centers are all staffed by doctors and open seven days a week, helping patients avoid costly trips to the emergency room. In addition, IMA has a diagnostic testing center, a registered dietician and physical therapists.

Small in that all of IMA’s facilities are with a 10-mile radius of one another and can be — and should be — viewed as a single practice, as they use the same electronic health records platform to keep everyone in every location informed.

Linda Schwimmer, vice president of the New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute, said the idea has a lot of merit.

“I think this is the way the health care system needs to go and I think it’s the way it will go,” she said.

Schwimmer said the integration between the two “makes a lot of sense” as the urgent care centers backstop the primary care offices by providing extended hours seven days a week, while at the same time maintaining the patient relationship with their primary care doctor.

“You can’t expect people to fully utilize primary care if you have very limited hours,” she said.

Febus agrees.