Paul Szmal: Welcome back to FLX Morning. It is 8.39. We're already up to 70 on what is going to be a muggy Tuesday. We're joined by our friends from Finger Lakes Health here this morning. Kim Alacua is here. Kim, good morning. How are you this morning?
Kim Malakwe: Good morning, Paul. How are you?
Paul Szmal: Good, good. So who do we have as our guests for today?
Kim Malakwe: Today we have two first-time guests for the radio. As you know, at Finger Lakes Health, we're always looking for ways to increase our access to care and provide new services for our community. And today we have Brooke Kuhl, who is a nurse practitioner, as well as Corey Mine, who is a nurse practitioner, both with Urgent Care, who, along with their colleagues, came up with a great idea to provide women's health services in our Urgent Care location in Seneca Falls to bring convenience to females. So now I'd like to introduce Corey and Brooke.
Paul Szmal: All right. Brooke, I'll start with you. Good morning. How are you?
Brooke Cole: Good. How are you?
Paul Szmal: Good, good. How long have you been a member of the Finger Lakes Health family?
Brooke Cole: About 17 years.
Paul Szmal: Wow. Wow. You don't look old enough to be, sorry.
Brooke Cole: I feel old.
Paul Szmal: No, but seriously, 17 years. Wow. I started as a nurse's aide. Oh, and then you progressed up through to the point that you're at now.
Corey Meyn: Corey, how about you? How did you get your start?
Paul Szmal: I'm a nurse's aide as well. I even went to nursing school over at the hospital, so I was with us for about 10 years. I left for a little bit, and I've been back for about three.
Corey Meyn: How long did you say, for you?
Brooke Cole: 13 total. I took a little break in the middle.
Paul Szmal: Neither one of you look old enough to be able to have been doing it for that long.
Brooke Cole, Corey Meyn: Thank you.
Paul Szmal: Let's talk about this, because obviously you felt there was a need, and there was maybe a gap that needed to be filled here.
Brooke Cole: Yeah. So as busy working moms, we felt that we tend to not take care of ourselves and take care of others. We felt that having extended hours, nights, weekends, holidays, for people to come get their care, we felt that it would be necessary to try to open that up to that.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, and Corey, the kind of care that we're talking about is something that you would typically find at your regular general practitioner, correct?
Corey Meyn: Correct. So we're trying to offload some of that pressure from those practitioners. Come see us. We'll get you up to date and allow people to have better access.
Paul Szmal: And what are some of the services that are being offered now at the Urgent Care in Seneca Falls?
Brooke Cole: So STI screenings, pap smears, breast exams, cancer screenings, UTIs, testing.
Paul Szmal: And this is, again, this is kind of filling, there was a hole in the market, so to speak. When you came up with this idea, I imagine that the support that you got from the higher-ups of Finger Lakes Health was probably like, yeah, absolutely, let's go with this.
Kim Malakwe: Yeah. Yep. It's a great idea.
Paul Szmal: So tell me a little bit about the practice itself, the Urgent Care practice, and how people can go about getting booked for things like these. Say a woman is looking for a pap smear or a breast exam or something of that nature.
Brooke Cole: So we're open every day of the week, 8 to 5. They can call and schedule the appointment anytime with one of the four of us, Corey, I and two of our other colleagues. You can also schedule online. So if you go to flhealth.org, you're able to schedule that appointment online yourself.
Paul Szmal: And that online scheduling, that comes in, I imagine, very handy in this day and age.
Brooke Cole: Very handy. I think we've been doing it for about a year now, and it's actually been pretty great.
Paul Szmal: And I found it interesting that you both mentioned that you're both working moms. So you really kind of have your finger on the pulse of what people in the community are dealing with in terms of the time crunch and the availability crunch.
Brooke Cole, Corey Meyn: Correct. Yep.
Kim Malakwe: I think it's also important to know that patients can come to Urgent Care to see Brooke and Corey as well as their colleagues for these women's health services, even though they may have a different primary care provider or an OBGYN. Because what we're really doing is just trying to offer convenience for our patients to offer these services on weekends and evenings when people typically, excuse me, typically can't get in to see their OBGYN or their primary care provider. And also by Urgent Care providing these services, as Corey mentioned, it's going to relieve some of the burden of the primary care practice. As we know that there's a lot of need for primary care, so the more services that we can offload to other service lines, we'll be able to get more patients into our primary care practices. So this was a great initiative that this team came up with.
Paul Szmal: Yeah. It's sort of a redistribution of available services, so to speak. So how long has this been in effect now?
Brooke Cole, Corey Meyn: Two and a half to three months, right around that time frame.
Paul Szmal: Okay. Yeah. Okay. May 5th, right?
Brooke Cole: May 5th.
Paul Szmal: And based on the short term, will we consider this a success so far?
Brooke Cole: Yeah. We're kind of starting off slow, but I think putting it out there more, we're hoping to get more people.
Corey Meyn: Yeah. Yeah. Getting the word out amongst not only the patient base, but even, as Kim said, people who may have a different primary care physician provider, letting them know that, hey, these services are available to you, and they're at this location, and they're available at these times.
Brooke Cole: Yeah. So.
Paul Szmal: If there is a finding during a pap smear or a breast exam, then they will alert the primary care provider, the OBGYN, for the appropriate follow-up.
Kim Malakwe: Oh, okay. So it's kind of working in concert along with other providers and other systems.
Paul Szmal: Absolutely. That's fantastic. I have to commend both of you for coming up with this plan and this program. And, again, it sounds like you had the full support of Finger Lakes Health to get the ball rolling here, and I wish you the best of success going forward with it.
Brooke Cole, Corey Meyn: Thank you. Absolutely.
Paul Szmal: So what do you see as the long-term goal for this?
Brooke Cole: Just to continue to be an open access center, honestly. Yeah. So just making sure that people know that the services are there and that they can take advantage of this regardless of who their OBGYN or primary care might be.
Corey Meyn: Correct.
Paul Szmal: And, of course, obviously, it's also an urgent care, so that goes without saying as to what services are offered there from an urgent care standpoint as well.
Brooke Cole: Absolutely. That kind of makes it, especially for women. Very convenient. It makes it almost like a one-stop when you really look at it because you have the urgent care component and now you have these women's services that previously may not have been as readily available in the area.
Corey Meyn: Yep.
Paul Szmal: So I congratulate you both and wish you the best, again, wish you the best of success in the effort. And thank you for coming and joining us here this morning. Really appreciate it.
Brooke Cole, Corey Meyn: Thank you. Thank you.
Paul Szmal: All right. And again, they are at the urgent care in Seneca Falls. And this is Finger Lakes Health's urgent care that now has a variety of women's services available, everything from breast exams and pap smears to other services that women are looking for. So you might want to just make a note to yourself and jot down if you're looking for these services and you're in the Seneca Falls area that they are now available to you at this particular location. It's 846 on FLX Morning.
