Audubon Area Community Care Clinic (AACCC) announced its plans to relocate to the second floor of the Bridgewater Medical Center, located at 750 Salem Drive. The AACCC is a community-based and patient-directed health center that delivers comprehensive, culturally competent, high-quality primary health care services.
Integrating primary health care with other services like mental health and substance abuse, Deputy Chief Executive Officer Brandon Harley said that the goal is to deliver quality health care to individuals and families experiencing poverty and related barriers.
“Many of our patients have never sought health care outside of emergent care and have few resources to meet long-term health goals,” Harley said. “By reshaping the delivery of health care and flexing processes to meet patients as they present, we hope to help them to live healthier lives and assist them in removing barriers to self-sufficiency.”
Audubon Area Community Care Clinic opened primarily for health screenings, referrals and health education services in April 2017. On July 5, 2017, they became a full primary-care clinic. Within five months of operation, they were seeing 123 unique patients.
Harley said that in 2018, their patient count climbed to 573 patients. To reach that number in 2019, the clinic only needs to see 10 more unique patients, and there are four months left in the year.
“The Audubon Area Community Care Clinic has grown since its inception in 2017, Harley said. “We have increased staffing, brought on new lines of services including behavioral health and substance use disorder treatment, and increased our number of providers to serve our patients’ needs.”
Currently, the clinic occupies 3,800 square feet on Wendell Foster’s campus, and this new location will provide just under 5,200 square feet of space with approximately 2,400 square feet of clinical space and an additional 2,400 square feet of administration space.
“At the new site we plan to have six exam rooms, a clinical triage area, a modified lab and diagnostic staging area, a larger administrative area to include a conference room and more individual office space for our providers and staff to better serve our patients,” Harley said. “In addition, we will have some space to continue growth in order to meet the ever-changing needs of our target patient population of the homeless and precariously housed.”
The clinic will be on the Owensboro Transit System route and Harley is working with the City of Owensboro Public Works and Transit system to have a bus stop as close to their new site as possible.
Wendell Foster has begun their own expansion and construction of a new outpatient services center, which, when completed may utilize some of the site AACCC is currently leasing from them, making it a “win-win situation” for the community, Harley said.
Wendell Foster’s CEO Eric Scharf said that while AACCC was leasing from Wendell Foster, it was a pleasure to work with them, and he is glad they can continue that work in another location. He said that the space vacated by AACCC will accommodate Wendell Foster’s growing need for office space.
“Down the road it will be assessed to see if it can support future campus needs or if the building needs to give way for a state of the art facility that could accommodate future growth,” Scharf said.
AACCC recently received an Integrated Behavioral Health Services expansion grant to increase access to high quality, integrated behavioral health services, including the prevention or treatment of mental health conditions and/or substance use disorders, including opioid use disorder. Harley said they plan to use the $167,000 grant to hire or contract with a psychiatric behavioral health provider to assist with behavioral health and substance abuse treatment and medication management after their first year at Bridgewater Medical Center.
The clinic recently hired Samantha Taylor-Kaai as the Clinic Program Director, and Harley said she is immersing herself in the practice and in-patient services.
Taylor-Kaai earned her bachelor’s degree in accounting and a minor in public health from the University of the Cumberlands and is a certified professional coder. She has served as president of the Western Kentucky Regional Chapter of the American Academy of Professional Coders. She was most recently assistant manager at Bluegrass Internal Medicine.
“Our board and staff are excited to have her on board with the practice,” Harley said.
AACCC will continue seeing patients Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. – 5 p.m., and is currently taking new patients and allows for walk-in and acute-care services daily. The clinic will be open until late October when it will move to their new location and open in early November.
To learn more or schedule an appointment, please call 270-686-6040.
