You’re an Arizona State University employee, you’re nursing some sort of infection that just won’t go away, but your doctor’s office doesn’t have an available appointment for at least a week.
What do you do?
Well, if you have health insurance through ASU, you can visit the ASU Employee Health Clinic and see one of two nurse practitioners.
The clinic, which is operated by the Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation, provides primary care services and is an extension of ASU Employee Health, which offers occupational health care. It is in a building adjacent to the HonorHealth Tempe Medical Center at 1500 S. Mill Avenue.
Judith Karshmer, dean of the Edson College, said the clinic fulfills two objectives: It expands health care to the ASU community and delivers another option for nurse practitioners and nursing students to get clinical experience.
“It’s based on the sort of premise that we do what we teach,” Karshmer said. “We teach people to be nurses. We teach them to be nurse practitioners. So that’s what we’re going to do.”
Suzanne Kennedy, assistant vice president for Environmental Health and Safety at ASU, said the expansion of ASU Employee Health is a cost-effective way to further help university employees.
“Because the clinic already has to pay for fixed expenses such as rent, the electronic medical records system and office staff, the incremental cost of expanding services is minimal,” Kennedy said.
The clinic is open Monday through Friday, and a nurse practitioner from Edson will be the primary provider, assisted by Edson’s nursing students.
In addition, the clinic will test an agentic nurse assistant, an autonomous artificial intelligence system.
The testing will consist of three phases, Karshmer said:
- Does the agentic nurse assistant have the knowledge to help a nurse?
- Can the agentic nurse assistant appropriately think through decision-making?
- Can the agentic nurse assistant interact with patients?
Karshmer said that the agentic nurse assistant could be used to help with chronic disease management, for example.
“After someone is diagnosed with, let’s say, diabetes, instead of going to see your nurse practitioner or your physician every time, you’ll be monitored by a nurse with the agentic nurse assistant for really intensive coverage and question answering, monitoring and anxiety decreasing,” Karshmer said. “So we’re going to test that.”
Karshmer said the clinic will also offer nutrition screenings, exercise screenings and sleep assessments. The clinic will not have access to X-rays, Karshmer added, so ASU employees who might, say, break a foot should go elsewhere for treatment.
Currently, ASU Employee Health schedules about 15 primary care visits a month, Karshmer said. The immediate goal of the clinic will be to increase that number to 15 patients a week and grow from there.
ASU employees who want to schedule an appointment can call the clinic at 602-496-1917. The clinic is available to full-time employees (not dependents) who have their health insurance through ASU.
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