FULTON COUNTY, Ga. — For more than a year, people living on the south side of Fulton County have struggled to find basic, quality healthcare since two hospitals closed last year.
Two groups are working on solutions by opening primary care clinics in south Fulton County to help fill the gap.
A joint effort between Morehouse School of Medicine and Fulton County set up a clinic in the East Point BuggyWorks complex called Morehouse Healthcare.
As 11Alive toured the new facility, leaders emphasized how each of its 20 exam rooms represents access for a community that has been in a healthcare desert since Wellstar Medical Center South and Atlanta Medical Center both closed in 2022.
Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice, President and CEO of Morehouse School of Medicine, says this clinic will be tailored specifically to the community patients it aims to bring in.
“We needed to do something right now,” she said. “When the Wellstar hospitals closed and there was a crisis, we said to the community, ‘We see you.’ We’ll be listening to the community for two things: what are the services we are still missing as we open up this one facility? And what type of facility needs to be our next facility and where does it need to be?”
Morehouse Healthcare will have six full-time providers that offer a range of primary care including prenatal and birth care, pediatric care, basic X-rays, and behavioral health needs as well as the typical coughs and colds and preventive care.
Within eight miles of Morehouse Healthcare’s East Cleveland Avenue location, Grady Health System announced two more primary care clinics to help fill the healthcare gap, one on Cascade Road and another set to open on Lee Street.
“We picked the location very strategically. We know that many of the patients who end up in the emergency room in our hospital come from this community, come from this zip code,” Dr. Kelley Carroll, Chief Ambulatory Officer, said.
Dr. Carroll said they had patients waiting to be seen before they even opened and have stayed busy since the Cascade location opened in July.
“We very quickly ramped up our schedules and are quite full and adding another physician starting in a couple of months. That’s how busy we are,” she said. “It's very important for this community to have access to primary care services, access to get their blood pressure checked, access to get their labs done, access to get their cold and cough taken care of, somewhere that they can easily drive to, somewhere that they pass every single day and that's part of their community and embedded there for them.”
Even though they’re different providers, neither clinic feels intimidated by its neighbor down the street.
“We want people to have a choice, so we don’t feel any competition. We feel opportunity for our community,” Dr. Montgomery Rice said.
Grady Health System says its clinics have been able to reduce unnecessary hospital stays and ER visits. The Morehouse Healthcare clinic expects to serve about 8,000 patients, a conservative estimate for the size of the facility, while it builds trust in the community.
Both clinics emphasized that the primary clinics are a first step with plans for more extensive healthcare facilities on the way.
Morehouse School of Medicine said they’re considering creating their next facility as a cross between an emergency room and advanced urgent care.