MedStar Health opens new facility in Brandywine
Integrated medical campus ‘a one-stop shop’ to serve residents in Charles, Prince George’s
Combining the best aspects of academic medicine, research and innovation with a complete spectrum of clinical services to advance patient care, MedStar Health officials hosted a grand opening celebration July 14 for their newest one-stop shop in Brandywine to serve residents of Prince George’s and Charles counties.
More than 50 health care
representatives, elected officials and community partners attended the event which featured remarks from MedStar Ambulatory Services President Bob Gilbert, MedStar Health Insurance and Diversified Operations Executive Vice President Eric Wagner, MedStar Orthopaedic Institute member and orthopedic surgeon Dr. Dennis Carlini, Prince George’s County Councilman Mel Franklin (D), Maryland Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller, Jr. (D-Charles, Calvert, Prince George’s) and David Harrington, president and CEO of the Prince George’s County Chamber of Commerce.
“What we have here today is a [three-story] 60,000 square-foot facility designed to be one of our integrated medical campuses,” Gilbert said in an interview. “Having services that are comprehensive in nature as well as having physicians that coordinate care amongst one another.”
MedStar Health at Brandywine — the second site in Prince George’s County and third overall in Maryland — will bring medical specialists from MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, MedStar Washington Hospital Center and MedStar NRH Rehabilitation Network to one convenient location, along with primary care. The new facility will also feature a community room for use by local groups and organizations, according to information from MedStar’s marketing and community relations office.
“In the first month, we’ll have 10 different specialists seeing patients in this facility, some fulltime and some coming in once a month,” Gilbert said. “They’re all hooked up and integrated into the same medical record so that as problems come up, and given how we’ve laid out the space, it really allows discussion back and forth between specialists.”
Gilbert said modern technological fixes include a 1.5 Tesla MRI machine, wherein radiologists will be on-site to take an image immediately and share that information with a patient’s primary care physician and the appropriate medical specialist. From there, a decision can be made on whether that patient needs surgery or should schedule a rehab appointment, which can be made during the same visit, he said.
“It’s that whole concept of one-stop shopping, physicians talking to each other — either directly or via the integrated medical record — and really trying to come up with health care that’s convenient, efficient and really focused on you, the patient,” Gilbert said.
As the largest healthcare provider in Maryland and the Washington, D.C., region, MedStar Health cares for more than 500,000 patients each year and claims to be committed to its notfor-profit mission in serving patients, those who care for them and local communities. Part of its vision as a leader in caring for people and advancing health includes providing zero-preventable harm, highest quality of care and transparency while focusing on six core values: service, patient first, integrity, respect, innovation and teamwork, according to MedStar Health’s website.
Gilbert said the Brandywine location is the fifth integrated campus MedStar has opened up in the last three to four years. What separates MedStar from other health care providers is that the centers are designed to better accommodate patients as well as encourage easier communication among the specialists, he said.
“What we’ll find here is really a lot of consolidation of what MedStar already has in the community and putting it under one roof,” Gilbert said.
“It’s an extension of our distributed-care delivery network strategy,” Wagner said. “It ties to our acquisition of MedStar Southern Maryland Hospital. … We want to actually bring services closer to where people live and work in Prince George’s County. I think we’re doing that at the hospital and this is just another example of that.”
MedStar Health at Brandywine will have an ambulatory surgery center on the lower level within the next year or so. These types of needs are necessary and anchors an area that’s growing along both the U.S. 301 and Route 5 corridors, according to Wagner.
“It’s another way to reach out further into the community to bring, what I believe, is needed health care and making it more accessible,” said MedStar Health Senior Vice President Christine R. Wray, a 35-year veteran in the health care industry who is also president of MedStar Southern Maryland Hospital Center. “We’ll have permanent practices so there will always be orthopedic surgeons. There will always be EMT here. There will always be cardiology and there’s always going to be primary care. We’ll also have a suite where we can bring sub-specialized people and other kinds of services that aren’t always needed every single day, but they’re needed twice a week or something like that. We’ll grow the practices that way. So it gives us flexibility based on what’s needed here in the community and what the patients want.”
In addition to providing quality health care, Wray said MedStar is implementing a system where everybody will be connected by way of technology and a sense of community.
“We’ve got this wonderful facility here in the heart of our legislative district,” Miller said. “For too long, our people have had to go out of the county for health care. For too long, they’ve had to rely on hospital emergency rooms for their primary care physician. To have these wonderful doctors in this wonderful hospital here in Brandywine is a dream come true.”
For Franklin, he is excited about MedStar and its investment in Prince George’s County, especially in south county where Brandywine is one of his constituent areas. The extraordinary thing is that it’s only the beginning as the county is on its way to becoming a health care destination for the entire region, Franklin said.
“This area of the county is really becoming a medical hub,” Harrington said. “The amazing jobs that are being created here, the innovation that’s happening here in a way that’s driving the medical technology and all of the incredible things that are happening here [will not only go] well for this region, but also for Prince George’s County [atlarge].”