AURORA | Medical students from the Anschutz Medical Campus may soon be taking trips to neighborhood grocery stores to help round out their education as future physicians.
In May, officials from the University of Colorado School of Medicine, College of Nursing and the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences announced a clinical affiliation agreement with grocer King Soopers and The Little Clinic. The Little Clinic, a subsidiary of The Kroger Company, operates clinics out of 12 grocery stores across the Denver metro area.
The new agreement, which also includes University Physicians, Inc., helps formalize a number of collaborative pushes to increase access to health care outside the boundaries of a traditional hospital or clinic.
“I think the hours at the Little Clinics are convenient for people. The hours that are offered are sometimes much easier for working families, in addition to the services that they offer on weekends when your primary care physician might not be available,” said Kelli McGannon, a spokeswoman for King Soopers. “It’s going to give us the opportunity to provide training in community settings. That will be one of the many things that will be offered.”
Specifically, the partnership could see an increased collaboration between the University of Colorado schools centered on the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora and Little Clinic sites in King Soopers stores across the metro area, including a site at 19711 E. Smoky Hill Road in Aurora.
“The affiliation will range from training opportunities for students to expanding our scope of services to potential formal arrangements with their physicians,” said Little Clinic Chief Medical Officer Ken Patric in a statement. “Our service delivery model is based on providing the quality care patients need, when they need it. By working with the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, our goal is to increase access to care.”
Like McGannon, Patric stressed the accessibility of the Little Clinic’s sites in Colorado.
“Our clinics are open seven days a week and are geographically dispersed,” he said.
That sort of access and community reach was a draw for administrators from the University of Colorado and the Anschutz Medical Campus. The CU School of Dentistry and School of Nursing made similar pushes to reach outlying community members earlier this year with a mobile dental van program, and giving students opportunities to deal with patients outside of the campus aligns with a larger mission.
“We share a common goal with King Soopers and The Little Clinic to strengthen our communities by working together to ensure access to health and wellness services,” said Lilly Marks in a statement. In 2010, Marks became the vice president for health affairs and executive vice chancellor at the Anschutz Medical Campus. “Solutions to some of the more preventable health issues of our time can only be discovered through innovative programs and partnerships such as these.”
While details regarding timeframe and scope are still up in the air, officials say the new agreement could translate into clinical training opportunities for CU students. What’s more, officials have hinted at the upcoming launch of a mammography van to offer mobile screenings at different Little Clinic sites.
“The other advantage is that often times, people don’t have a primary care physician,” McGannon said, adding that the partnership with the University of Colorado could result in an expanded scope of care. “What they’re seeing in a Little Clinic is a nurse practitioner.”
Those joint efforts would come on top of several initiatives that launched earlier this year, including the construction of an educational King Soopers grocery lab at the new Anschutz Health and Wellness Center that opened in April. King Soopers has also worked with the new Health and Wellness Center, as well as Children’s Hospital Colorado and the Aurora Public Schools and Cherry Creek School districts for 5th Gear Kids, a program designed to improve nutrition in public schools.
Working with King Soopers in the leadup to the launch of the new, $45-million Health and Wellness Center was a priority for Executive Director James Hill, who spoke to the importance of including local companies in its basic programs when the facility opened its doors to the public in April.
“Part of the sustainability of all this is the private sector making money from it. That’s the way things work in this country,” Hill said. “Right now, a lot of the private sector is making money from people being unhealthy. We want to identify and work with those companies that would benefit financially if people are healthy.”
According to McGannon, the marriage of private industry and everyday lifestyle is a big component behind the collaboration. In addition to the grocery lab and the 5th Gear Kids initiatives, increasing access to health care and wellness services for grocery store shoppers speaks to a bigger trend.
“What we’re going to find is that consumers are looking to save time and money. They’re also looking for quality health care. Bringing it into a grocery store at a convenient time and at a price that’s affordable is one of the ways that we can respond where we think there is a need for these types of services,” McGannon said. “I think that might be a trend you will continue to see evolve.”
Reach reporter Adam Goldstein at agoldstein@aurorasentinel.com or 720-449-9707