March’s Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day are ideal times to reflect on recent and upcoming changes to Rochester’s women’s health care landscape.
Comprehensive care centered on women
At every stage of life and across the continuum of care, women benefit when their caregivers understand their unique needs, from understanding menopause to how conditions such as heart disease present in women. receive. Additionally, women thrive when care environments are welcoming, uplifting, and supportive of the whole person.
Rochester Regional is making historic progress in this area. On March 11, we opened the Rochester area’s first Women’s Health & Wellness Center in Pittsford. The center is an integrated medical and wellness services center designed specifically for women. Within his four walls are a wide range of medical services, including primary care, gynecology, cardiology and behavioral health. The center wants to focus on preventative health and wellness and the question of how to help women thrive at every age. Future health services will include topics such as how to optimize diet and nutrition to promote good health, how to cope with menopause, what physical activity is best for each individual, and what meditation is right for you. We will focus on topics that the women who use the center bring to us, such as dolphins. Health and wellness go hand in hand to create vitality, and we want to co-create this new approach to wellness care with our community.
care navigator
One of the Women’s Health Center’s most exciting innovations is the introduction of Care Navigators. These special coordinators work one-on-one with patients to coordinate on-site services and arrange for needed additional care across a clinically and operationally integrated network of Rochester area hospitals and specialty clinics. To do. This commitment across the continuum of care ensures comprehensive, coordinated, whole-person care at every stage of life.
Destination campuses bring care closer to home
The Women’s Health & Wellness Center is part of Rochester Regional’s Destination Campus Strategy, providing local access to care in all the communities we serve, including rural, urban and suburban. Over the past several years, we have opened destination campuses in Geneseo, Henrietta, Geneva, Batavia, and now Pittsford. Destination campuses are multi-service facilities that provide a variety of primary and specialty care services under one roof. It’s all about convenient access to quality care. The rise of virtual care also expands access, easing barriers such as travel time, wait times, and the inconvenience of in-person visits.
Eliminating nursing care disparities
Next month is National Minority Health Month. Black Maternal and Child Health Week runs from April 11th to 17th. Common Ground Health reports that in the Finger Lakes region, black women are 50% more likely to have life-threatening birth complications and serious maternal illnesses than white women. In Monroe County, the infant mortality rate for black infants is more than three times the rate for white infants.
The Monroe County Joint Community Health Needs Assessment, a joint effort of local health systems, Common Ground Health, and the Monroe County Department of Public Health, identified the following primary goals for 2022-2024: And the children. ” The overarching goal is to “reduce racial, ethnic, economic, and geographic disparities in maternal and child health outcomes and promote health equity for mother and child populations.”
Next month’s Healthcare column will take a closer look at local solutions that support the urgent goal of improving maternal and child health outcomes in our communities. Women’s health care in Rochester means caring for all women at every stage of life, and now is a time for creative new approaches on all fronts.
Dr. Elizabeth Bostock is Executive Medical Director of Women’s Health at Rochester Regional Health. Dr. Jane Salamone is executive medical director of the Primary Care Institute at Rochester Regional Health. Women’s Health & Wellness Center is located at 3349 Monroe Avenue (Pittsford Plaza), Rochester, NY 14618, (585) 922-9206.
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