Brandy Smith says she’s proud to be part of a milestone with the opening of the Golden Age Clinic.
Mississippi’s first facility-based long term care certified rural health clinic opened Oct. 1 at Golden Age Nursing Home. Smith, a family nurse practitioner, manages it.
The clinic serves only Golden Age residents, Magnolia Manor tenants, Golden Age employees and those employees’ spouses and children. Smith said it will reduce turnaround time and unneeded emergency room visits, plus employees needing medical care won’t have to leave work.
As a nurse practitioner, Smith can evaluate, diagnose, treat and manage acute and chronic illnesses. The clinic’s services include physical exams, wellness checkups and diagnostic tests, among other things. It also can file claims such as Medicare, Medicaid and Blue Cross/Blue Shield just as a doctor’s office can.
Down the road, if this clinic does well and there is enough demand, a free-standing facility could be added to serve people in that area of town, said Ed Hill, administrator of Golden Age.
“It would just be a real asset, the way I look at it, to offer something to the residents of East Greenwood,” Hill said.
That idea appeals to Smith, too.
“We have great potential at having a large practice, especially once it expands into the community, because there is nothing on this side of town,” she said.
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Hill said discussion of a clinic began about two years ago.
Golden Age once had 15 doctors seeing patients, but now it has only seven. Hill said those doctors work well with the staff, and he doesn’t want to lose them. So it helps reduce their work load if some tasks can be delegated to a nurse practitioner.
“We want to do all we can to provide the physicians we do have on our staff with relief,” he said.
Three physicians have collaborating agreements with the clinic: Dr. John Hey, Dr. Kenneth Hines and Dr. Gutti Rao.
During the planning, consultants advised what the requirements for the clinic would be. Those instructions were followed, and when representatives of the Mississippi Department of Health surveyed the clinic, they found no deficiencies, Hill said.
Smith graduated from the Family Nurse Practitioner program at Delta State University in May 2009. That July, she began a 720-hour internship with Hines.
When Hill asked around about candidates to manage the clinic, Hines recommended her.
It was important to pick the right person for the job, and they did, Hill said. Smith is eager to serve, and everyone is happy with the arrangement, he said.
Smith also was impressed with Hill’s vision for the place.
“He was gung ho from day one about going forward. He thought this was the new way to help provide better care for the residents of Golden Age,” she said. “And especially now since we’re going through this health care reform and we have such a shortage of primary-care physicians in Mississippi as it is, we really look to the nurse practitioners’ role in the rural health community and all to provide those services to the residents of the community.”
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The clinic is housed in a room once used for Certified Nursing Assistant classes. Smith generally sees one to four people in a couple of hours in the afternoon after completing her rounds in the nursing home. Because she is on site, a nurse can call her if a problem needs immediate attention.
The addition of more staff at the clinic will depend on how busy it is.
Smith said just adding a receptionist would be a big help.
“Right now, I’m doing everything from answering the phones to checking the patients in myself, doing my exams and then administering any medicine that has to be administered, doing any lab test that has to be done — and then writing the receipts for them as they walk out the door,” she said.
The clinic is mainly “problem-based” now, but Smith hopes to add other options, such as wellness and men’s and women’s preventive health services.
Another more immediate goal is to have a fully functioning lab. Some tests can be done in house now, but most have to be sent to Greenwood Leflore Hospital.
“The services are small now, and I’m sure as we grow, our services and capacity to provide those services will grow, too,” Smith said.
The clinic is open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.
