 92.7 W.O.B.M. Good morning, Sean and Sue, with you on a brand new Monday morning, almost at the end of February, Sue, but it is a Monday brand new week, and we are joined today by the Co-Chief Executive Officers, Bob Garrett and John Lloyd from Hack and Sack Meridian Health. Gentlemen, good morning. Hi guys. Good morning. How are you? We love when you visit. We love it. We love it. It's just great to be back again. So good. You guys have a lot going on. I saw some of this in my own neighborhood, and I was posting pictures the other day about this. Let's talk a little bit about convenient care and how people can determine which is their best option, and we'll sort of go through some of the other things that you're going to be doing coming up here in the area. Let's talk about convenient care, John. Yes, actually we're here today because we're opening a new convenience care center in one of the stores and a ready clinic, and so it's an exciting day for us. Convenient care is really all about accessible and affordable care when your regular physician may not be available or maybe your listeners don't have a primary care physician, and typically convenient care treats sort of minor non-threatening illnesses such as fever, upper respiratory infections, urinary tract infections, and then also you can get immunizations and even you can get a physical and staffed by very well qualified nurse practitioners who have their master's degree and part of the Hackensack Meridian family. So that's really what it's all about, and today is an exciting time as we... I think that when you say you agree that with today's environment people are so busy going in here, there, and everywhere, their schedules are all crazy. Convenience is something that's really going to be a key. Absolutely, and again we always encourage our consumers and patients to go to their physicians, whether it be primary care physicians or specialists, but there are times when people need to be seen, and that could be on the weekend, it could be at night, and we're offering different times to that, and Bob may want to speak to that, but Bob Garrett and I are co-ceos at Hackensack Meridian. The books tell you that it never works to have co-ceos, but as you can see, we are here hugging and kissing, and we're having a great time. I want all the listeners big welcome for Bob Garrett. Wow, we're even sharing a mic. We like that. This is pretty good. Hey Bob, this is exciting. You're going to tell us a little about the big ready clinic that you have ribbon cuttings for today. Yeah, so we're really excited about that, you know, partnering with Ready Clinic what a great organization, national organization, and as John said, this is all about convenient care, accessible care, affordable care, and so Hackensack Meridian is partnering with Ready Clinic, and we recently opened nine different locations throughout Mammoth, Ocean, and Middlesex counties, so we're exciting that today, just in a couple hours, we'll be holding a ribbon cutting ceremony for the Hackensack Meridian clinic right here in Tom's River, located at the right aid on Route 70. So these ready clinics are really exciting. They're going to provide quality care, award-winning quality care, accessible to patients, accessible to the community, when patients need it most, you know, it's going to be, these are close to people's homes in their own communities. So patients are able to really walk in without an appointment to see a board-certified nurse practitioner, and nurse practitioners today can do so much. They're really so well-qualified, so well-trained, so we're really happy to have some really talented nurse practitioners working at these ready clinics. Patients can get a prescription if needed, and they're able to fill that prescription at the right aid pharmacy, and in addition to Tom's River, Hackensack Meridian ready clinics are also located in Belford, Highland Park, Little Lake Harbor, Malboro, Neptune, Olbridge, Red Bank, and then Whitesville. So they're really, they're really located throughout the region really conveniently, and they're open 8 o'clock in the morning, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, and 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays as well. See, that's what makes it so convenient, you know, I mean, because that's when your child gets sick, 6 p.m., you know what I mean? Absolutely. You know, and you have nowhere to go. And a lot of the, you know, and if you think about it, a lot of the pediatrician offices, you know, they're not open until 8, so this is convenient. We're going to be working, as John said, working with the local physician community to coordinate that care. That's great. So it's really, it really is going to be very, very convenient. I saw ours in Little Lake Harbor that you were just mentioning. I saw it open the other day when I was in there looking around it. It's very nice, very clean, very, you know, and like you said, situated right in the pharmacy, it's sort of a nice coupling there of the two. John, how does this change traditional health care with the opening of the ready clinics? Well, I think it changes traditional health care. If you look at what Hackensack-Marinian has done, we've created what we call this continuum of care, and that is providing a lot of services in an ambulatory setting. And this is just another example of how we can take our services out into the community and not have patients who need to be seen come to our hospitals. We'd rather take care of them in ambulatory settings whenever possible. Certainly if your listeners need the care at any of our hospitals, I mean we have 13 hospitals now spanning eight counties. They're all doing a great job and a phenomenal job. Our emergency rooms do a great job. They also have, in some cases, urgent care centers. So we're now offering whatever the consumer wants. You want convenience care? We have that. You want urgent care? We have that. You need to go to our hospital. We have that. And we try to do it in a very outstanding manner with the best physicians and the best nurses. And Bob, we want you to get the final word here today as to giving us a description. Emergency care and ready clinic. What is the difference between the two? So if someone needs to find those boundaries, how do you go about doing that? Yes, so there's certainly a time and a place for emergency care. Our emergency departments do, as John said, a fantastic job. The difference really is that they're open 24-7, 365 days a year. But they really should be used for more serious conditions, serious illnesses, things like chest pain, shortness of breath, loss of consciousness, seizures, serious healthcare issues where patients might need follow-up, whether it be surgery or intensive care, or even some extensive testing. The ready clinics are really for immediate care for non-life threatening illnesses, meaning ailments like fevers and flus, respiratory and ear infections, urinary tract infections. But they can also provide other more advanced services like stitches, concussion evaluations, and minor fractures, which I think a lot of people will use these ready clinics for. So whether you're visiting one of our 13 hospitals, as we talked about, receiving care from one of more than 6,000 physicians throughout Hackensack Meridian, using telehealth services where you might be receiving, getting care right at home through technology, these ready clinics provide another option for consumers. And if you think about what's going on now in healthcare and the reform of the Affordable Care Act, we want to provide as many options to consumers as possible with accessible care that's affordable. That's really important. Very nice. Perfect. So if Sue slugs me, I can go over to a ready clinic and they can stitch me up right there. Absolutely. All right, here we go. And Sean, that's after you work out in one of our fitness centers, right? Which I belong to. Yes. Yes, as a matter of fact. Yes. I got to get there a few more days than I do a week, but that's a whole nother issue. But I do love my workout club, though. Guys, thanks so much for being with us. The co-CEO's Bob Garrett and John Lloyd from Hackensack Meridian Health had today. What time is the ribbon cutting today? It's at 10.30, right? 10.30 this morning. All right, so you're just a little bit of ways from doing that. We'll have fun over there. Okay. Great team, guys. Great team. Thank you. Sue and Sean, thank you so much for having us. Thank you. Guys, see you. Thanks for being with us.