NEW YORK CITY — Mount Sinai and CityMD are partnering up to combine the health care system's network of providers and the urgent care chain's services, officials announced in a statement Tuesday.
The collaboration makes it easier for patients who seek immediate care at a CityMD clinic in one of the five boroughs to follow up later with a Mount Sinai specialist.
“Many patients treated in the urgent care setting have chronic conditions that would benefit from prompt, efficient follow-up care by highly trained primary care physicians and specialists," said Mount Sinai Health System president and CEO Dr. Kenneth Davis in the statement.
The two health care organizations will compile a list of specialty care doctors that meet collective quality standards and share patients' electronic health records.
“Our goal is to provide convenient and coordinated access to quality, cost-effective care at all levels,” Dr. Davis said.
The idea of a coordinated "continuum of care" has been gaining traction in the health care industry as insurance reimbursements to hospitals increasingly weigh patient outcomes and readmission rates over the quantity of services rendered, according to a New York Building Congress report released last week. Hospitals have focused on expanding primary care and opening new outpatient facilities as means of preventing illness and reducing the frequency of costly emergency room visits and overnight stays.
Mount Sinai, for example, is moving forward with plans to replace Gramercy's Beth Israel, a 825-bed teaching hospital, with a new "Mount Sinai Downtown Network," which would include a network of ambulatory care facilities and physicians’ offices.
CityMD has positioned itself as a natural ally with its efforts to coordinate a patient's care with other doctors. The company employees clinical assistants at a call center in Uniondale, Long Island who facilitate advanced imaging and specialist referrals for such chronic issues as high blood pressure, pre-diabetes and depression, CityMD CEO Dr. Richard Park told Crain's New York in an interview last year.
