Column: Urgent care center and urgent need for the Island

Readers may recall responding to a survey sent out this summer concerning the desire for an urgent care center here on the Island. Well, the results of the survey are in and were shared with me by Senior Citizen Foundation  president Barbara Silverstone.

The Foundation initiated the survey in response to a concern by residents that health care here is limited on weekends and at night, except for the emergency medical services.

There’s nowhere to go, short of the emergency room at Eastern Long Island Hospital in Greenport, for ailments like headaches, stomach aches and tick bites.

The Foundation described urgent care as “a facility or capability that primarily treats injuries or illnesses requiring  immediate care but not serious enough to require an emergency room visit.”

There were some 2,200 surveys mailed to Island property owners. 439 responses were tallied, according to Silverstone, with 95 percent of the respondents saying that they would use the services of an urgent care center “if covered by insurance.”

Fifty-eight percent said they would use it even if it were not covered by insurance.

According to the survey statistics, 50 percent of the respondents are full-time residents while another 20 percent live on the Island “most of the time.”

The age breakdown of those completing the survey indicated that 60 percent are between the ages of 51 and 75. Thirty percent are between the ages of 76 and 90.

There were 31 respondents under 50 and 17 over 90.

Other information gathered from the survey shows that 27 percent of the individuals live alone and 245 report having a serious health problem, Silverstone noted.

Additionally, 64 percent expressed interest in expanded health education on the Island, the survey showed.

“In view of the robust number of survey respondents and the fact that most of them would utilize an urgent care program, the Board of Directors of the Senior Citizens Foundation approved the establishment of an urgent care exploratory committee to determine its feasibility,” Ms. Silverstone said.

She said that she looks forward to issuing a report and recommendations in early 2018.

It looks like the foundation is on to  something important here. I look forward to hearing more.

Meanwhile, a “mea culpa” is in order concerning a mention I made last week about the upcoming Senior Smarts program at the library. I identified one of the speakers from the Peconic Land Trust as being from the “Picnic” land trust.

As former Reporter publisher Bob Dunne would say, “It’s a very inexact science.”