Near North Health Opens Bronzeville Clinic, Offering Outpatient Family Services
BRONZEVILLE — Near North Health’s Bronzeville Family Center has a new location inside Oakwood Shores.
The clinic opened last week on the ground floor of Oakwood Shores apartments, 3753 S. Cottage Grove Ave., moving from its Berkley Avenue location after 30 years. Infrastructure issues with the old building made the move necessary, CEO Tristé Lieteau Smith said.
The Oakwood Shores clinic is smaller than the previous location, with 14,000 square feet of space. The smaller footprint allows for better efficiency, Smith said. The clinic will offer the same menu of services, including internal and pediatric medicine, women’s health and prenatal care and behavioral health therapy.
“We’re hoping that we maintain the patient base that we had at our [former] location, and so we’re hoping that we have 10,000 to 11,000 patients with around 30,000 to 35,000 visits in a year,” Smith said.
The clinic, which has an onsite laboratory, will continue to offer early intervention services, care coordination and case management and health education. Providing wraparound resources to patients is crucial, Smith said.
“We look at people holistically to provide additional resources, to make sure we can help them to prioritize their health and understand that you cannot do that with all the other issues that may be impacting you,” Smith said. “And so having those support services under one roof, whether that’s behavioral health, whether that’s care, coordination, nutrition, WIC services, is necessary.”
The reopening of Near North’s Family Health Center comes after the grand opening of Northwestern Medicine’s Bronzeville Outpatient Center in September. The two health care providers have a longstanding relationship, with Northwestern Medicine supporting Near North efforts for 60 years. Near North patients have access to Northwestern Medicine’s specialists and programs to offer “a seamless transition of care” on a sliding scale, Smith said.
While Smith is worried about the impacts federal Medicaid cuts and other disruptions of services could have on operations, she and her team are optimistic.
“One of our old mottos is, ‘We’ll find a way,’” Smith said. “So helping them to find a way and providing them with additional resources, we anticipate that when they are up for redetermination to receive Medicaid, we can connect them with community resources, volunteer work or other things so that they can maintain their benefits.
“As far as our funding, there were some payment slowdowns, which caused some cash flow issues, but we were able to work through that.”
The clinic is also committed to training the next generation of health care providers, working with the Morehouse School of Medicine to offer students a year-long community health worker course.
“We hope that the pipeline will encourage people to do more in the health care field, like becoming a medical assistant, becoming a nurse, even becoming a doctor,” Smith said. “That’s something that we’ll be piloting in a cohort, a small cohort at Oakland Shores that will be coming up soon,”
Near North Health operates other clinics in the city, including Old Town and West Humboldt Park. The Bronzeville clinic will host an open house Saturday with another Jan. 10 to introduce patients and neighbors to the new facilities.
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