Hospital-based wellness centers on the rise

Hospital-based wellness centers are changing the healthcare model by providing convenient access to early treatment, preventive care and pro-active wellness programs.

The increase of hospital-based wellness centers is part of the population health management movement that calls for healthcare professionals to focus more on preventing, rather than treating, illnesses, notes NorthJersey.com.

When patients have convenient access to healthcare, they seek help earlier and receive treatment before their symptoms have manifested into chronic or acute conditions that would send them to urgent care or hospital emergency centers for more costly, complicated treatment, according to a Crain's Cleveland article.

"We see people accessing primary care services routinely who otherwise would not access those services or would access them only once they had become ill or experienced an acute exacerbation of their chronic condition," Kevin Sears of the Cleveland Clinic's AtWork program, told the publication.

Nationally, health and wellness centers are seeing their role in communities evolve and grow. One in every 15 Americans reportedly relies on a community health center for at least one aspect of their health management. 

In East Greenwich, Rhode Island, Miriam Hospital has opened a Center for Weight and Wellness aimed at fighting the obesity epidemic by providing comprehensive care plans for patients struggling with obesity.

And in New Jersey, Englewood Hospital and Medical Center's newly-opened Graf Center for Integrative Medicine provides an array of services for health and wellness management, including yoga classes, acupuncture, counseling, and nutritional and diet consultations,

"This is a new way of promoting healthy behaviors and managing medical conditions,"  Despina Psillides, M.D., medical director at the Graf Center, told NorthJersey.com. "People want to take control of their health, so when they ask what they can do to feel better, we have the answer."

To learn more:
- read the Crain's Cleveland article
- read the NorthJersey.com article 
- learn about Greenwich's Center for Weight and Wellness