PCC is always moving closer to providing one-stop health shopping for its patients. Thanks to our Shared Care program with St. Joseph Mercy Hospital, expectant mothers can now get the finest in pre- and post-natal care right here, while having their babies delivered by physicians and residents working closely with PCC staff.
"Once again, we're expanding our capability to provide care to the community through training partnerships with other facilities," says Dr. Jerry Walden. In this case, it's the new St. Joseph family practice residency program, which is coordinated by Drs. Eric Skye and Stephen W. Bishop of Huron Valley Family Practice Center. Moms-to-be who come to PCC will receive pre-natal care from a team including one of those doctors (both of whom teach in the residency program) and a resident, have their baby delivered at St. Joe's by the doctor who has worked with them (and, ideally, with the assistance of the resident, unless he or she has classes), then return to PCC for post-natal care.
"The patient never leaves the Packard Community system," says Dr. Skye. "PCC can do obstetrical care, they can do prenatal care, but, like many family physicians, they don't do birthing, so they're able to expand their services by cooperating with us in my practice. Bringing the delivery of babies into my practice is, for me, fun."
And bringing it into the education of young doctors is, in his view, vitally important. "This allows me to show residents that there's more than one way that physicians can practice in the community," Dr. Skye says. "I think if residents only see patient care in one setting, they don't have a wide enough breadth of education to decide what kind of practice they want to go to, and they don't have a wide enough breadth of patient experience to take care of whoever shows up at their door when they go into practice."
October 1997