This billbosrd across the street from the new Main Line Health Devon went up at 7:15 a.m. Monday morning, 45 minutes before the ribbon-cutting.
In an age when convenience is king, Main Line Health is betting big – royally big.
The health system this week opened a nearly 23,000 sq. ft., $13.6M patient facility a stone’s throw from the Devon Horse Show.
For central Main Liners, Main Line Health Devon offers a handy place for primary care visits, lab work, diagnostic imaging and physical therapy.
The CT scanner at MLH Devon gives patients a calming view of flowering dogwoods. The Devon machine uses advanced technology to cut radiation without sacrificing image quality.
What the new health center doesn’t offer – at least, not yet – is urgent care, despite the surging demand for its hospital ERs since the collapse of Crozer Health. No doubt, the Patient First Urgent Care up the road, IM Health n Wayne and VYBE Urgent Care in Radnor contributed to that decision.
Like Penn Medicine, Main Line Health has been systematically putting care closer to communities. Devon is the health system’s seventh satellite patient facility – and the only one technically on the Main Line.
Primary care treatment rooms offer views of the Devon Horse Show grounds.
“For decades, we’ve all gotten comfortable that if you need something and you live in Radnor or Wayne you just drive to Bryn Mawr [Hospital] or Paoli [Hospital],” Main Line Health President and CEO Ed Jimenez tells SAVVY. “But the reality is: we’ve become accustomed to getting things closer to where we live – the little nuances of life: is there a gas station close to me? Is there coffee?”
Main Line Health Devon means patients who need x-rays and blood draws no longer have to find garage parking and navigate a big hospital, he says.
One of four phlebotomy rooms at Main Line Health Devon.
The facility has four primary care physicians – all are women, three are new to the Main Line and the fourth is moving to Devon from MLH in King of Prussia.
Primary care physicians Sherin Abraham, Kenyetta Givans, and Nisha George are all accepting new patients. Joining them will be Dr. Lauren Baker, who’s transferring from Main Line Health King of Prussia.
The Devon center spans the first and most of the third floors of a four-story office building at 80 W. Lancaster Ave. – another novel use for the area’s excess office space. T/E’s Bear Hill Elementary, currently under construction in an office park a few miles away in Berwyn, is another.
Main Line Health shares a building and parking lot with the McCausland Keen & Buckman law firm, a REMAX office, the nonprofit, SpeakUp!, and Stillwater Capital Advisors.
“Could we have built a building? Sure.” Jimenez explains. “But that would not have enabled us to feel like we’re part of the fabric of the community. Being in a building with other tenants that have been established for a long time feels like we’ve joined something.”
At Monday’s well-attended ribbon cutting, Executive VP/Chief Operating Officer Barbara Wadsworth raved about her just-do-it team. “Maybe 24 months ago tops, we started talking about building something between Paoli and Byn Mawr – easier access, bring it closer to the patients, engage other physicians in the community that aren’t employed by Main Line Health and partner with them to give their patients a choice as well as access. So here we are – this is speed to action.”
Main Line Health President and CEO Ed Jimenez speaks at the ribbon-cutting as Executive VP and COO Barbara Wadsworth looks on.
Added Shelly Buck, Main Line Health’s President of Ambulatory Services: “We can grow faster and we can grow bigger and we’ll continue to expand our footprint and deliver on the needs of the community.”
Indeed, CEO and President Jimenez is already talking expansion. He says Main Line Health Devon will grow to six primary care docs and then expand hours in the next year or so. “I expect we’re going to be so oversubscribed that we’re going to have a space problem, which is a great problem to have.”
The Devon facility can never become a trauma center, he says, but it can one day offer walk-in care – potentially easing the crunch at its busy ERs. Main Line Health has seen a 10% surge in Emergency Department volume across its hospitals since Chester Crozer Medical Center closed last spring. Bryn Mawr has seen a 5% increase while Riddle volume is up more than 50%, Jimenez tells us.
“Once we get settled about the expanded hours, then we can get into open access – a kind of urgent care mimicking.”
Main Line Health Devon, 80 W. Lancaster Ave., Devon, offers primary care, outpatient PT and rehab, diagnostic imaging (except for PET scans) and lab tests. 1.866.CALL.MLH.
Management and staff cut the ribbon on Main Line Health’s newest patient care facility in Devon Monday morning.
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