Dedicated Senior Medical Center opened a location in Mayfair in late 2018 that specializes in providing preventive and coordinated care to its patients.
DSMC, which opened its first center in 1982 and expanded to Philadelphia last year, is modeled to coordinate with all its patients’ doctors to ensure the patient is receiving only necessary and top-quality care. Its Mayfair center is located at 6431 Sackett St.
“The normal process for senior citizens is when they go to their doctor or primary care physician, typically their doctor will send them to a specialist who will give them medication. Then they’ll go to another specialist and get more medication, and the cycle continues,” said Johnny Weatherbe, community liaison and growth consultant for DSMC. This could lead to seniors taking more medication than they necessarily need, Weatherbe said.
“What we do is coordinate their care with all their specialists to ensure that medicine A given by doctor A doesn’t get offset by medicine B given by doctor B,” he said.
There are two primary care physicians who work onsite, as well as a cardiologist and an acupuncturist who go among the four locations. Primary care physicians can each see a maximum of 450 patients. Patients are encouraged to come into the center once a month, whether they are ill or not, to make sure they have continued health. The doctors can see up to 20 patients a day each. Medication can be picked up onsite.
“We’re a high-touch model,” said Christopher Payne, marketing sales manager for DSMC, saying the goal is to meet the patients while they’re healthy instead of when they are in the emergency room.
Bloodwork and radiology can be performed onsite in the center’s 20 exam rooms, and the site also includes an activity and fitness center. There is also an event space where birthday parties, lectures and other events are hosted. Free transportation is offered for patients living within 5 miles of their respective center.
“We want to provide wholistic care for our seniors,” Weatherbe said.
The centers are run by ChenMed. In 2004, Dr. Jenling James Chen was given two months to live after being diagnosed with cancer, but couldn’t get an appointment with a specialist for another six weeks. The disease ended up not being terminal, and he developed a business model to provide more attentive care to patients in his situation.
DSMC has 52 centers in the country. Four of them are located in Philadelphia. The others are in Olney and North and West Philadelphia. They have plans to open a location in South Philadelphia in the near future with the goal of opening about 10 centers in the city.
They accept a wide variety of health insurances.
To learn more, visit Dedicated.Care or call 267-448-4908.
