MEDICALEXAMINER THE BEAT GOES ON

It’s American Heart Month, so for the next several weeks we’ll be reading stories about heart health and heart disease statistics and prevention and all other things heart-related. All month long our hearts will be beating, tallying an average of 100,000 beats a day for each and every one of us.

In fact, even when a heart is cut out of someone’s chest for a heart transplant operation (or an Aztec sacrifice, for that matter) it will continue to beat sitting in a pan awaiting placement in its new home.

Why? How? What makes the heart go lub-dub, lub-dub, lubdub all day every day — and all night every night?

It’s a hearty topic for our intermittent series called Body Parts.

Visit this handsome but unassuming building on Belair Road and you may experience the most unusual approach to medicine you have ever encountered.

As far as anyone at the Perfect Health Urgent Care Clinic knows, says Chris Woods, a PA at the office, it’s the only facility of its kind anywhere in the world. It wasn’t copied or borrowed from a concept already being used elsewhere.

Here’s how it works: patients drive up to the window at the right end of the building. They’re greeted at the window, somewhat fast food style, and that’s where the check-in process starts. A patient is handed either a clipboard to fill out their information, or a digital version can be sent instantly to their cellphone. They ease into a parking space and complete the digital or paper paperwork. Once it’s returned to the window, the patient is told to go to Door #5, for example. On the other side of that door is a regular exam room into which the nurse, PA or doctor will enter to provide treatment. When everything is taken care of, the patient walks back out to their car through Door #5 and goes their merry way.

What are the advantages? For both patients and a medical practice, they are numerous. Anyone who has spent an hour or two (or more) in a crowded waiting room in the company of perhaps dozens of sick, coughing, sneezing and wheezing people can appreciate the value of completely eliminating that part of a doctor visit experience. Nobody wants to get even sicker precisely because they went to a doctor to get better.

Another key benefit for patients is simple privacy.