Caring for local seniors

Medical group takes ground-level approach

f. andrew taylor/viewJoanne Steffen, executive director for the Nevada CareMore operation, stands beneath a sign for the company?s Flamingo Care Center located at 3085 E. Flamingo Road, Suites A and B.

To understand CareMore, the new managed care organization that's coming to town, you need to start at the feet, specifically, the patient's feet. The CareMore Health Plan was formed in 2003 in California by physicians who realized they were taking good care of their elder patients by looking at the big picture.

"They were looking at their diabetics and realized that they were controlling them so they weren't having amputations," said Joanne Steffen, executive director for the Nevada CareMore operation. "What they did was invite their patients to come in on a monthly basis to have their toenails clipped."

As Steffen explained, the monthly visits allowed the physicians to have someone regularly checking out the patient's feet to check for wounds to see if they needed prosthetic support, check their blood sugar and, in general, let the physicians know if something was happening to the patients.

"There wasn't just a focus on what they were eating, but on how they were taking care of themselves," Steffen said.

CareMore opened its first of two locations in the valley Nov. 3, bringing its Medicare Advantage health maintenance organization to Nevada. CareMore is not set up to be primary care physicians. The organization takes more of a big picture approach and already has partnered with several local physicians attached to hospitals near the soon-to-open locations.

"Sunrise Health has partnered with CareMore," said Ashlee Seymour, spokeswoman for Sunrise Health. "We look forward to working with CareMore and their patients in January."

Steffen said the CareMore approach is to provide myriad services to promote wellness.

"In their original practices, they had a nutritionist, a psychologist, they had a social worker in case a client had financial problems or no place to live. They were able to help people who didn't know how to manage their fixed income or how to get their medicine at the least expensive rate," Steffen said. "They were able to replicate all that with success at a number of locations, and now they're bringing it here."

The Flamingo Care Center will feature examination rooms, a training room, a gym and more.

"The gym will have specialized equipment for seniors. It'll be designed to help people increase their strength and independence to keep them healthy and vital," Steffen said. "It will be staffed by a couple of physical therapists as well as a kinesiologist, an expert on muscles and how they work."

CareMore's clients will have access to a number of services and opportunities that are not traditionally provided by an HMO. Steffen said that CareMore can do this by concentrating on preventative medicine, so that patients end up spending less time in a hospital.

"For the price of even a one-day stay in the hospital, we can provide a lot of preventative care," Steffen said. "A day in the hospital can cost as much as $3,000 to $5,000."

The Flamingo Care Center was previously a plastic surgeon's office, so while much of the infrastructure for a medical facility was still in place, CareMore is doing quite a bit of remodeling to open the space, make the rooms larger and easier to move around in and remove the sliding glass window separating the reception area from the staff. Steffen said they want it to look and feel more like a concierge desk than a traditional medical office. She said the overall plan is to bring people together, make communication easier and remove barriers. That architectural philosophy works in concert with the care philosophy.

"We pride ourselves on making sure that there are no barriers to the patient getting back to the primary care physician or to receiving the tests that they need," Steffen said. "We want to make sure the patients can get the tests to determine that they are healthy and can stay healthy."

Flamingo Care Center is located at 3085 E. Flamingo Road, Suites A and B. The Tenaya Care Center, 2601 N. Tenaya Way, will celebrate its grand opening at 10 a.m. Nov. 10. Both facilities are expected to begin taking patients after the first of the year.

For more information, visit www.caremore.com or call 800-499-2793.

Contact Sunrise and Whitney View reporter F. Andrew Taylor at ataylor@viewnews.com or 380-4532.