Written By: Jennifer Summer for Your Houston News
The first of its kind for the Memorial Hermann Hospital System, the new Convenient Care Center located on Beltway 8 near Summer Creek High School will deliver a new model of care for patients. The Memorial Hermann Hospital System and representatives from Memorial Hermann Northeast Hospital along with community members and business owners celebrated the grand opening of the new state-of-the-art facility with a special ceremony and ribbon cutting ceremony Jan. 3.
The Community Chamber of Commerce of East Montgomery County, the Lake Houston Area Chamber of Commerce and the Liberty-Dayton Chamber of Commerce all celebrated the opening with a ribbon cutting ceremony.
“This is very exciting for us and the community; this has been a very long dream coming to open a facility like this. It was six years and three days ago when Memorial Hermann became a direct participant in this community by assuming the operational responsibilities of Memorial Hermann Northeast Hospital,” Louis Smith, chief executive officer for Memorial Hermann Northeast, said at the ceremony.
Since the inception, Memorial Hermann has been able to bring new services to the community including the new Convenient Care Center which will cater to all patients especially those in the Lake Houston area. The Center is designed to take the stress out of scheduling appointments for routine health needs by offering families convenient options such as walk-in access and extended evening and weekend hours.
“The Memorial Hermann Convenient Care Center is a pilot for our system. Through our demographics studies and research, we determined the Lake Houston area would be the best for this type of care center,” Dan Wolterman, president and chief executive officer of Memorial Hermann, said. Wolterman reflected on the ground breaking ceremony for the center which was a little less than a year ago where they talked about what they would bring to the community as far as care and services.
The Memorial Hermann Convenient Care Center is a $7.4 million, 30,000 square-foot one-stop shop officially open for patients Jan. 7. The facility will offer highly coordinated access to an array of services in a single location.
According to a press release, the Convenient Care Center will specifically provide the Greater Lake Houston area with primary care, adult and pediatric; specialty physicians; lab services; comprehensive radiology services, wellness, prevention, physical therapy and rehabilitation and a 24-hour emergency room.
Former Summer Creek High School Principal and current Assistant Superintendent of Schools and Athletics at Humble Independent School District Trey Kraemer also spoke about the partnerships and the excitement of having a healthcare center in the Lake Houston area.
“We now have a Convenient Care Center that can match the needs of an active and growing community; we could not be more excited as residents in the community,” Kraemer said.
Kraemer reflected on when they first started building Summer Creek High School and the Summer Creek Business and Community Association, now known as the Summer Creek BizCom, and there was not much out in the area.
“The new model of care will be different than anything you have experienced before. Previously, a family was forced to fit their medical appointment around the schedule of the physician or the hospital,” Wolterman said.
“We pledge to meet the family with their needs and to better accommodate the family’s schedule and calendars. This center will finally put the ‘C’ back in convenient.”
The primary purpose of the center will allow families of the Lake Houston area a variety of high-quality healthcare services staffed by board-certified medicine physicians and emergency trained nurses. For those patients with higher levels of care, they will be transferred to Memorial Hermann Northeast, Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center or Children’s Memorial Hermann Hospital. In the future, they hope to roll out eight to ten more convenient care centers like the pilot across the Houston area.
“As a system, we are on a journey to eliminate all potential sources of patient harm from our facilities. Memorial Hermann is leading to the way to be a high-reliability healthcare organization; that is what our patients can count on,” Wolterman said.