Grady Health System held a ribbon-cutting Tuesday for its second outpatient center south of I-20, continuing its efforts to keep up with increasing demand for health care services in the area, particularly since Atlanta Medical Center closed nearly two years ago.
The newest health care center is a 16,000-square-foot building in the Lee + White mixed-use development in Atlanta’s West End. The center will offer primary and specialty care, including geriatric, orthopedic, HIV, mammography and behavioral health. It will also have an on-site pharmacy, X-ray equipment and a lab.
Grady now has eight neighborhood centers in metro Atlanta, including this newest addition and a similar outpatient clinic that opened on Cascade Road last year.
The new centers will help meet the health care needs of the community closer to their homes and fill the “health desert in central and south Fulton” left when Wellstar’s Atlanta Medical Center closed in 2022, according to Fulton County Chairman Robb Pitts. “This is a lifeline” for people in the area, he said, and the center will be close to MARTA and the Atlanta Beltline, making it an accessible and affordable choice.
Grady Memorial Hospital and other Atlanta facilities have reported rising patient volumes since the closure of AMC hospitals. Grady is regularly deemed “dangerously overcrowded” in one state dashboard that monitors emergency department activity.
Grady Memorial Hospital in downtown Atlanta provides emergency and indigent care for patients in Fulton and DeKalb counties. Its burden grew when Wellstar closed its two Atlanta Medical Center locations — in downtown and East Point — which served many uninsured and underinsured patients in south Fulton County.
The community hasn’t fully recovered from the loss of the health services provided by the AMC hospitals, Pitts said, but the new clinics are another step toward satisfying the health care needs of the area. He added that the new clinic is on par with others offered by area hospitals.
The need to handle additional patients sped up Grady’s expansion strategy, though plans for the new health centers were in motion even before the two AMC closures.
Grady began developing plans to increase health care access for residents along the Beltline nine years ago. However Grady didn’t have the funding in place until 2022, around the same time as the downtown AMC location closed, according to Shannon Sale, Grady Health System’s chief strategy officer.
“In two years, we have gotten two clinics,” Sale said.
She said it took about 1½ years to develop each of the new buildings. The Cascade center had previously been a Wellstar clinic. The Lee + White business center was developed from a renovated industrial warehouse.
Grady was able to expand the neighborhood clinics in underserved areas of south Fulton County through a Georgia Department of Community Health-directed payment program, Georgia’s Advancing Innovation to Deliver Equity, which uses federal and state funding.
The health system estimated that each of the clinics will provide up to 30,000 primary care visits annually and cost $5 million to $8 million to operate each year.
Fulton County last year agreed to provide Grady with $43.3 million in 2024 to be used to open the two new primary care clinics. In coming years, the county’s funding will shift based on use of Grady services by Fulton’s residents; and funding will increase according to the federal Consumer Price Index for medical care, which averages 3% annually.
The agreement runs for six years, with the option of two two-year renewals for a total of 10 years.
The new contract hinges on whether Medicaid expands coverage to households earning below 138% of the federal poverty line. If Medicaid expansion passes, the county would no longer subsidize Grady.
Throughout the pandemic, the requirement to annually renew enrollment in Medicaid was waived in exchange for additional federal funding, but that has ended.
Grady is Atlanta’s only Level 1 trauma center, serving Fulton and DeKalb counties, and will treat patients, including those who are uninsured, underinsured and indigent. Level 1 trauma centers are capable of handling the most serious injuries.
Health system officials said Tuesday they knew the Wellstar closures would increase their volume of Level 1 trauma cases and said they saw a 35% increase in the first year.
An analysis by the AJC showed that when AMC-South closed, the population no longer 15 minutes away from an emergency room were mostly Black with below-average income.
A joint study by Fulton County, Morehouse School of Medicine and consultants Ernst & Young found that southern Fulton had no specialists in cardiology, pulmonology or infectious diseases. The area also didn’t have any doctors that care for patients with heart disease, respiratory diseases or HIV and AIDS. All those conditions were prevalent in the area’s 234,000 residents.
In addition to the latest outpatient clinics, Grady expects to open a freestanding emergency department in Union City in 2026.
Grady’s Lee + White Center will officially open Monday and will continue to serve patients Monday through Friday, 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information about Grady’s neighborhood health centers, visit gradyhealth.org/locations/.
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