Clinics for seniors open across Southern Nevada

HealthCare Partners will open the last of 23 new senior-focused clinics in Southern Nevada by October in an effort to ease access to geriatric care for the area’s aging population.

MyGeneration clinics, with locations in Las Vegas, Henderson, Boulder City, Pahrump and Mesquite, will provide primary care and case management to residents 65 and older, said market president Mark Price. The company serves more than 90,000 seniors in Southern Nevada.

Twenty of the 23 planned clinics are open, with three more planned to launch by Oct. 1. The new clinics are a combination of new and existing spaces dedicated or converted to senior-focused locations. The concept is new to Nevada for the company, though it operates 65-and-up clinics in Florida under a similar model.

“A lot of what this comes down to is we’ve set up clinics that have a smaller patient-to-doctor ratio than you’d see in other primary care clinics around the country,” Price said.

Doctors at MyGeneration locations will handle 750 patients each, Price said, estimating that number to be about one-third of the average primary care patient load for a doctor in the U.S. Each patient will be scheduled for a half-hour appointment instead of 15 minutes to allow for more one-on-one time with their doctor, he said.

“Seniors are very unique in what they need,” HealthCare Partners Medical Director Dr. Judith Ford explained. “We’re trying to wrap around the services at the clinic to make sure the visit is successful.”

That means patients will receive help from case managers to coordinate care — including referrals to specialists and help tracking down medication — outside their visit with the doctor, she said. The clinics also offer diagnostic services such as scans and X-rays, and lab draws onsite.

Ford, who has practiced medicine in Nevada since 2003, said she views the clinics as a “step forward” in a town where coordinated care can be hard to come by.

Price agreed. Though Nevada still ranks low in access to primary care — 46th nationwide according to the UnitedHealth Foundation — he said he hopes the clinics are one piece of the answer to providing access to care for the area’s senior population.

“There is a shortage of providers in this community,” Price said. “MyGeneration is our answer to that for seniors.”

A full list of clinics is available at hcpnv.com/mygeneration.

Contact Jessie Bekker at jbekker@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4563. Follow @jessiebekks on Twitter.