A Day in the Life at Gateway

A day in the life at Gateway Hancock Health is truly a little of this and a little of that. From immediate care to family medicine, from labs to our employer-based clinic, you’ll find a lot is happening behind our doors! 

Hello there and welcome to Gateway! No matter why you’ve come in today, you’ll be greeted and checked in, or directed which way to go to find your department. Have a bit of time before your appointment? Enjoy a complimentary beverage from the coffee bar, charge your phone at the charging station, or relax in our light-filled waiting area.  

Providers in family medicine see patients for all sorts of reasons. Annual visits are one of the biggest reasons people make appointments with family medicine. Annual visits are important because they check your current health status against your health baseline, and they include various tests and screenings appropriate to your age and lifestyle. Patients can see their family medicine practitioner for needed follow-ups, acute conditions, or for medication refills. When they’re not seeing patients, you might catch providers in the dictation room catching up on notes and charting. 

Gateway’s immediate care is open with extended hours because we know urgent medical needs aren’t limited to working hours. A day in the life in immediate care involves seeing a lot of patients with urgent but – not emergent – health needs. Maybe your baby was coughing all night. Or you twisted your ankle playing soccer. Maybe that rash that surfaced after camping is getting worse instead of better, or you cut your hand making dinner. Immediate care is the place to go for a quick fix. 

Labs and imaging have scheduled appointments (say your primary provider wants you to do blood work before your annual visit) and walk-in spots available (immediate care will often send their patients over for an x-ray or blood draw based on presenting symptoms). You can imagine that things are busy around here, especially when immediate care is extra busy. However, the first thing that happens in the lab is routine maintenance of the equipment; lab results are only useful if they’re accurate, so we work hard to keep our equipment in top shape. 

Think of the Employer Based Clinic as a clinic within a clinic! This is a place for employees of specific organizations or businesses to get convenient and affordable medical care. Gateway’s employer-based clinic specifically serves the employees of Hancock Health so it’s super accessible to employees. Employees stop by before getting to the office, on their lunch break, or any other time that works for them. 

While the specifics vary, days at Gateway are filled with competent care, a warm welcome and the best service we can provide for our patients. It’s a great day to visit Gateway!