The new Wow! Clinic at the University Health Center Downtown is an eye-catching experience because of a wonderful collection of art produced by San Antonio artists. It also is named the Wow! Clinic because of an attitude of service that will make patients say “Wow!” about the way they are treated.
Carlos R. Jaen, M.D., Ph.D., professor and chairman of family and community medicine at the Health Science Center, says the clinic is a team concept that has been adopted effectively in other cities. Essentially, each family seen in the clinic has a team of physicians coordinating every member’s care.
The clinic, which is on the third floor, is a collaborative project of the Health Science Center and the University Health System.
“We have transformed the clinic,” Dr. Jaen says. “It is a place you would want to see even if you aren’t in need of a physician right now. We engaged Brother Cletus, the artist in residency at St. Mary’s University, to design a color pattern to be welcoming and healing. He also collected close to 90 pieces of original art from San Antonio schools; these were framed and hung in this clinic.”
Preliminary quality-of-care studies show that the team approach is enabling new patients to be seen within two days of their phone calls and that the new environment is positively perceived by patients. “So far, we are seeing that this is the kind of service everyone wants, and in a convenient location,” Dr. Jaen says.
Physicians and family and community medicine residents from the Health Science Center are working in the clinic. Patients have the option of seeing only faculty physicians. A team of faculty physicians led by Drs. Sasha Loffredo, Linda Ivy, Ramin Poursani and Robert Parker are “teaching the next generation of family physicians how to do it right,” Dr. Jaen says.
In addition to routine primary and prenatal care, the clinic has a focus on disease management for diabetes and hypertension. Procedures routinely offered include sigmoidoscopy, colposcopy, joint injections, excision of joint abnormalities and other common office procedures.