When Emma Bradley woke up with body aches one day last week, she spent most of the day resting in her dorm room in Williams Village.
At around 5:30 p.m., the University of Colorado freshman decided things were bad enough that she should see a doctor. She realized she could still visit the new satellite health clinic in Williams Village before it closed at 6 p.m. if she hurried — and it’s a good thing she did.
While filling out paperwork in the clinic, Bradley fainted. When she came to, the clinic’s staff told her she had a 105-degree fever. They called her an ambulance.
“That’s my experience; I think it’s very handy,” she said, chuckling as she recalled her brush with the flu. “It’s nice not to have to go to Wardenburg. It’s so far.”
CU’s Health and Counseling Clinic opened Jan. 11 along with the rest of the newly renovated Village Center Dining and Community Commons. The Boulder campus spent $48.9 million to tear down and renovate Darley Dining Center, a 45-year-old dining hall that one CU regent described as “disgusting.”
The renovated facility is a 109,000-square-foot community center that serves the roughly 2,700 students living in Williams Village, the CU community at Baseline Road and 30th Street.
The facility includes a late-night eatery, specialized food stations and study areas. Within the next year, the center will also house a UPS store and a grab-and-go food shop.
Planners wanted the Williams Village community center to serve as a one-stop shop for all of a student’s needs, so they also built a health clinic on the first floor.
“It was a partnership with Housing and Dining Services to meet the needs of the students of Williams Village, who have sometimes felt a little remote from campus,” said Melissa Lowe, executive director of Wardenburg Health Services. “We certainly had calls from parents in the past asking, ‘My student is sick in (a Williams Village dorm), can you go out to them?'”
The satellite health clinic is roughly 2,000 square feet and can accommodate up to three mental health counselors and four medical practitioners.
The clinic is fully integrated, meaning that doctors, nurses and mental health counselors work together to treat students.
Since 2013, any student who visits Wardenburg Health Center for a medical issue also takes a two-question test that screens for depression and anxiety. Depending on the results of that screening test, their medical provider may start a conversation about visiting with a mental health counselor.
That practice will continue in the Williams Village clinic, but health officials are taking it a step further. At the satellite clinic, a student’s health records will be shared, with their permission, between medical providers and mental health counselors.
“The student will have a comprehensive, seamless experience,” Lowe said.
The shared health records are being piloted at Williams Village. CU health officials say if all goes well there, they plan to begin implementing this new model at Wardenburg.
Lowe shared an example of a situation in which having a team of providers could help get a student back on his or her feet more quickly. She said a student might complain of abdominal pain to a doctor, but will fail to mention that he or she is also having a hard time adjusting to being away from home.
In that situation, the student could benefit from having a mental health counselor in the room or on his or her care team, Lowe said.
“That happens all the time — they’re stressed, they failed a class — but they don’t share that with their medical provider,” Lowe said. “We want to do what’s best for the students. It just gives us a better window into what their life is like on campus that we might not know as a medical provider.”
For now, the satellite clinic is open in the afternoon and early evening on weekdays. Lowe said those hours will be adjusted to meet demand from students.
Perhaps the biggest perk of having a medical clinic in Williams Village is that students don’t have to ride the Buff Bus to Wardenburg when they’re not feeling well.
“We’re meeting them right where they live,” said Gloria Brisson, director of medical clinical services for Wardenburg Health Services. “We’ve done some preliminary assessment as to why people are choosing to seek services there and the No. 1 reason is convenience.”
CU freshman and Williams Village resident Lauren Garlock took the bus to Wardenburg to see a doctor about a cold not long ago. Though she hasn’t visited the new satellite clinic yet, she said she thinks it’s a nice feature for the Williams Village community.
“Having the health facility here is just a little bit nice because you don’t have to go all the way to main campus to go to the doctor,” she said.
Sarah Kuta: 303-473-1106, kutas@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/sarahkuta
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