- A new value-based primary care center opened in Allentown this week
- It’s the second Oak Street Health location in the Lehigh Valley, following a Bethlehem opening in June
- Services are tailored toward the Medicare population
ALLENTOWN, Pa. — There’s a new primary care provider in the Lehigh Valley and it just opened its second location.
Oak Street Health offers a different care model than a traditional fee-for-service doctor’s office.
"If you think about your typical health care experience, usually you're having one annual visit per year and then it's kind of a hand-raising activity where you say, 'I don't feel well, I need care,'" Oak Street Health Regional Vice President Francie Alexandre said.
“We want to be your partner on your care journey and help you meet your health goals and we recognize that the way to do that is to see our patients more frequently.”Oak Street Health Regional Vice President Francie Alexandre
"And it's a little bit of a one-size-fits-all approach. And so our model is very tailored toward the Medicare population.”
The new location on Lehigh Street in Allentown opened Wednesday, just a few months after it opened its first Lehigh Valley center in Bethlehem in June.
“We want to be your partner on your care journey and help you meet your health goals and we recognize that the way to do that is to see our patients more frequently,” Alexandre said.
Value-based health care system
Alexandre said Oak Street Health is a value-based health care system serving.
"In the value-based care world, we are incentivized as a business to be successful to make our patients happy, healthy out of the hospital, as we call it, versus other provider models like fee for service, where it's more about the volume of patients that you're seeing."Oak Street Health Regional Vice President Francie Alexandre
"In the value-based care world, we are incentivized as a business to be successful to make our patients happy, healthy out of the hospital, as we call it, versus other provider models like fee for service, where it's more about the volume of patients that you're seeing," she said.
The Lehigh Valley locations offer traditional primary care services, as well as some non-traditional services, such as transportation for patients, social workers on staff and community rooms where it runs events to combat loneliness among patients.
Alexandre said healthier patients are seen quarterly while more complex patients are seen every two weeks.
Right now, the two Lehigh Valley locations each have one nurse practitioner seeing primary-care patients, but they hope to add more providers to each practice.
Oak Street Health has 14 locations in Pennsylvania as well as more than 190 clinics and 23 states.
