Enthusiasm for a new endeavor

Over the next several months, the residents of Wilkes-Barre and surrounding Wyoming Valley communities are going to notice considerable exciting activity at 169 North Pennsylvania Ave. — a professional building just a few short blocks from Public Square being transformed into a primary care clinical delivery and workforce development center of excellence.

The Wright Center for Community Health and Graduate Medical Education is enthusiastic aboutthis endeavor to build a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) Look-Alike Teaching Health Center in Luzerne County because we are steadfast primary care, medical education, and public health enthusiasts.

Together with our like-minded community partners, we are building a preferred future in which everyone in the U.S. will benefit from a national health system that prioritizes equity, quality, and affordability of comprehensive health services and career opportunities. In pursuit of this vision, The Wright Center’s Graduate Medical Education Safety Net Consortium is an “Achievable by All” model to deliver whole-person primary health services and cost-efficient workforce development. This model leverages inclusive partnerships and the belief that interprofessional education and clinical training improve the healthcare delivery and medical education systems, so they work better for everyone.

We are getting closer to the goal for our healthcare clinical delivery and educational systems thanks to the hustle and bustle of quickly transforming the more than 34,000-square-foot building into our FQHC Look Alike Teaching Health Center in Wilkes-Barre – an initiative that serves as a symbol of our steadfast investment in the overall health and well-being of Luzerne County. We are upgrading the facility in phases, and regional residents of all ages will soon be able to access comprehensive, affordable, integrated primary and preventative health services at our new state-of-the-art practice.

This mission-driven project has quietly been in the works for months. Thanks to the collaborative efforts of Mayor George Brown and the city’s administration, legislative leaders and staff, the Diamond City Partnership, and other community partners, The Wright Center was able to identify and purchase this well-situated property from King’s College. Collective support also made it possible to secure timely approval from the zoning board and planning commission, as well as a Pennsylvania Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program grant.

This endeavor will enable us to grow our mission to improve access to high quality, indiscriminate, comprehensive healthcare for everyone, regardless of their insurance status, ZIP code, or income bracket. Our sliding-fee discount program — which is based on family household size and income — ensures our medical, dental, behavioral health, addiction and recovery, infectious disease, and specialty services are affordable to everyone. No patient will ever be turned away from any professional services due to an inability to pay.

We’re also trying to eliminate needless suffering from costly chronic illnesses by emphasizing preventative care, ensuring access for managing acute and chronic diseases, and enabling healthy behaviors through empowering, primary care integrated nutrition, lifestyle medicine, obesity medicine, and school-based health service lines.

The educational aspect of our mission aims to alleviate the national shortage and misdistribution of primary care physicians by building a sustainable workforce pipeline that recruits from communities served like ours in Northeast Pennsylvania to develop inspired, competent physicians who are privileged to serve. Beyond providing primary care, our new Wilkes-Barre venue will also expand clinical training opportunities for physicians enrolled in The Wright Center for Graduate Medical Education’s eight residency and fellowship programs, as well as for interprofessional students from nearly a dozen academic institutional affiliates.

The Wright Center is not new to Luzerne County. We’ve been a community partner for many years, operating small, but impactful practices in the city and Kingston. We have been passionately working together with staples of the community, such as The Institute, the Northeast Pennsylvania Area Health Education Center, the United Way of Wyoming Valley, the AllOne Foundation, the Hazleton Integration Project, and numerous school districts and social service agencies to improve the health and welfare of our region.

Our history goes back nearly a half-century. Our predecessor organization, the Scranton-Temple Residency program, was founded in 1976 and soon began educating its first class of six internal medicine residents. From those humble beginnings, The Wright Center has responsibly evolved and now trains hundreds of physicians and interprofessional health students annually while also providing high-quality primary healthcare services to nearly 35,000 patients in response to well-documented community health needs. Today, we have more than 650 employees, including nearly 250 physician learners.

The Wright Center is our nation’s largest Teaching Health Center Graduate Medical Education Safety Net Consortium funded by the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration and its influence stretches from coast to coast. Partnering with four like-minded Federally Qualified Health Centers in Washington D.C., Ohio, Arizona, and Washington, our National Family Medicine Residency operates as a unique Community Health Academic Medical Partnership training community-minded physicians who express an interest in serving vulnerable and historically medically underserved communities.

As renovations get underway in Wilkes-Barre, we felt it important to offer this overview of our nonprofit enterprise and its aspirations. We look forward to further strengthening and expanding our network of partners to collectively work toward better health outcomes and to promote health equity in all the communities we serve. We are excited to meet new partners in Luzerne County.

It is a privilege for The Wright Center to establish a Federally Qualified Health Center Look-Alike Teaching Health Center clinical delivery and learning venue in Wilkes-Barre. We are proud to be in the neighborhood and part of the collaborative effort to make downtown Wilkes-Barre and the Wyoming Valley an even more vibrant and healthier place to live, work and recreate. We look forward to keeping you updated as our building plans develop and we get closer to opening our doors to you, your family, and your friends.

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Linda Thomas-Hemak, M.D., FACP, FAAP, is the president and chief executive officer of The Wright Centers for Community Health and Graduate Medical Education.