In June 2016, Verde Valley Medical Center opened a satellite campus in Camp Verde, providing health care to residents of the lower Verde Valley as it already had to Cottonwood, Sedona and the Village of Oak Creek.
Three years later, VVMC is working to expand its services in Camp Verde by opening up a new Immediate Care service at the location, allowing patients to get primary care services quickly.
“Patients will receive Urgent Care services — the same services they would receive at an Urgent Care, they will receive at our Immediate Care at a much lower price,” Lynda Ojeda, practice manager for VVMC’s Camp Verde Clinic, said.
Patients will be charged the copay they would receive for primary care, not the higher one usually charged for urgent care, as part of the hospital’s ongoing efforts to improve affordability.
While the hospital still recommends that patients facing any life threatening medical issue such as a heart attack or stroke call 911 or head to the emergency room, Immediate Care allows for maladies that are serious and time-sensitive but not an instantaneous threat to be treated by medical professionals in a timely manner without an appointment.
The facility will be located in the front of VVMC’s Camp Verde campus, in an office that used to hold ophthalmology, and will be able to handle most basic injuries and sicknesses that patients encounter normally — fractures and sprains can be splinted and basic treatment can be provided for colds, strep or the flu. VVMC employees stressed their focus on ensuring that relevant documentation — such as school absence excuses for children — be handled quickly as part of the care.
VVMC intends to cut costs by staffing the Immediate Care facility with nurse practitioners, who can diagnose patients, order relevant tests and prescribe medication. By operating as part of the hospital facility, the Immediate Care staff have access to the wide range of medical expertise as needed, but can handle most basic issues in-house.
“We won’t have an attending physician working with us in the setting, but we do have physicians readily available to us, both in-office and after hours,” said Jason Litzinger, a nurse practitioner who will be working in Immediate Care. “They are even available for us to reach out and do a telephone consult with them. There’s always someone ready to assist us should we need that.”
By connecting to the wider hospital system, VVMC hopes to maintain more affordable costs for Immediate Care by taking advantage of services available throughout the Northern Arizona Healthcare system. With many patients in Camp Verde on the older side and therefore often suffering from ongoing conditions in addition to whatever brings them to Immediate Care, the connection to the electronic medical records of the greater hospital allows for easier access to relevant information.
Immediate Care does not have an official start date but hospital administrators said to expect in early May. Hours will be 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends, though those may change in the future.
“Just walk in. You don’t have to call,” Trista MacVittie, director VVMC’s Communications Department, said. “As we start to see patients and analyze the data, those patterns and trends will tells us when are the hours that we need to be available, when people maybe aren’t coming as often, so those are not set in stone hours. They’re just to get us started, so we can have a baseline for seeing where the volumes are.”
Camp Verde Town Manager Russ Martin praised VVMC’s upcoming plans, saying that this fulfill the promise that the town had hoped from the Camp Verde Campus.
“This was what we had hoped for — that it was going to be an opportunity for our residents to get this Immediate Care,” Martin said. “We have a nice building there. I think the focus has been about increasing the level of care and opportunity to do just that — get immediate care, not have to go to the hospital or go to Cottonwood for those kinds of services. If they haven’t seen a doctor before, this now allows them to do that, which is really what we were hoping for to begin with.”
