Three Patient Care Facilities Call
Audubon “Home”

The Audubon Biomedical Science and Technology Park houses some of the country’s most advanced biomedical research. It is also home to three clinical facilities that serve the residents of the New York metropolitan area, as well as the surrounding neighborhoods of Washington Heights, Inwood, and Harlem. Two clinical facilities, the Associates in Internal Medicine (AIM) practice site and the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center, are located in the Russ Berrie Medical Science Pavilion. An Ambulatory Care Network Corporation (ACNC) site is also located within Audubon Park.

ACNC Site

ACNC

The ACNC is a subsidiary not-for-profit corporation of New York-Presbyterian Hospital. The purpose of the ACNC is to shift primary care from the clinical facilities within New York-Presbyterian Hospital into the community, making the care more accessible. The goal is to restore an earlier and more personal interaction between patients and their physicians.

The ACNC operates six diagnostic and treatment centers between 158th Street and Dyckman Street in Manhattan. It is the largest practice network in the metropolitan area. Approximately 50 physicians and dentists, all of whom have academic appointments at Columbia, see about 65,000 patients per year. Nurses participate as team members with physicians, dentists, nurse practitioners, midwives, clinical specialists, psychologists, social workers, medical and nursing assistants, and patient representatives to provide coordinated services on an outpatient basis to patients of all ages. The Audubon facility offers basic care, such as obstetrics, primary care, and pediatric primary care. It also features an Urgi-Care Center for non-emergent adult and pediatric care.

AIM Practice Site

AIM

For the past 23 years, the involvement of Columbia-Presbyterian’s Associates in Internal Medicine (AIM) group practice in the Washington Heights community has offered a valuable service—state-of-the-art medical care via a long-term relationship with a personal primary care physician.

AIM was started in 1977. “We embarked on this long before managed care was popular,” says Dr. Rafael Lantigua, AIM’s medical director and professor of clinical medicine at Columbia University’s College of Physicians & Surgeons. “It’s not like we jumped into this because it was fashionable. Two decades ago, we recognized the importance of providing quality of care to our underserved neighborhood.” AIM has more than 55,000 patient visits per year.

The new AIM practice site at Audubon is a primary care center for young families. Its focus is on preventive medicine. The site, which opened in the fall of 1998, offers patients a warm, non-clinical atmosphere with state-of-the-art exam rooms. Each exam room possesses a networked computer for electronic charting. A personal physician is assigned during a patient’s initial visit. AIM is staffed by 26 full-time faculty members, approximately 125 residents, two nurse practitioners, and four social workers, most of whom speak Spanish and English. AIM’s 24-hour, seven-day-a-week availability, outpatient and inpatient care, and subspecialty referrals also help achieve continuity of care for the patients.

Dr. Robin Goland is the center’s co-director and Florence Irving Associate Professor of Medicine at Columbia University. “The center is disease-focused and is staffed by interdisciplinary medical personnel. Those two things make our center especially unique,” says Dr. Goland. Children and adults are treated at the new center, notable for its warm, inviting, and sophisticated ambiance. When you enter the center you feel immediately welcomed, despite the fact that it is a medical office. The key aspect of the center’s design besides its ambiance is that patients have the opportunity to receive first-class coordinated care under one roof. Multiple specialists, from pediatrics, medicine, surgery, ophthalmology, neurology, psychiatry, genetics, nursing, and nutrition share the goal of preventing serious complications that can accompany diabetes.

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