Oak Street Health opens center in Freeport

By MOHAMED FARGHALY mfarghaly@liherald.com

In a significant stride towards its mission of revitalizing healthcare for seniors, Oak Street Health has proudly inaugurated its 17th primary care center in the state of New York. The network, renowned for its value-driven approach to primary care for adults on Medicare and endorsed by the esteemed AARP, is now warmly welcoming patients at its state-of-the-art Freeport facility, conveniently located at 14-16 Brooklyn Ave.

Dr. Yonette Davis, the Senior Medical Director at Oak Street Health, expressed her elation at the center’s launch.

“We are thrilled to open our Freeport center in New York and begin delivering an unmatched patient experience and improving health outcomes for older adults in the community,” Davis said. “At Oak Street Health, we are committed to providing the highest quality care to meet the individual needs of our patients and we are excited to bring our innovative healthcare model to the area.”

Oak Street Health takes pride in its personalized and proactive primary care methodology, meticulously designed to cater to the distinctive requirements of elderly adults. Anchored in an integrated approach, the model seamlessly integrates behavioral healthcare and support for social determinants. This holistic care is effortlessly accessible through a blend of in-center consultations, in-home visits, telehealth appointments, and a round-the-clock patient support helpline.

Remarkably, the network has demonstrated a remarkable reduction of approximately 51% in patient hospital admissions as compared to Medicare benchmarks. This achievement is complemented by a notable 42% decrease in 30-day readmission rates and an impressive 51% drop

Book Review: in emergency department visits. Oak Street Health’s commitment to its communities is evident in its practice of hiring personnel from local neighborhoods and channeling resources for community support initiatives.

Oak Street Health extends a warm invitation to all Medicare beneficiaries, including those with Original Medicare Part B, select Medicare Advantage plans, Medicare Supplement or Medigap plans, and Medicare-Medicaid Plans.

For those seeking to explore the benefits of Oak Street Health’s pioneering approach, a wealth of information is available on the Freeport center’s dedicated website.

Since its establishment in 2012, Oak Street Health has rapidly emerged as a trailblazing network of value-oriented primary care centers specifically tailored for adults on Medicare.

“ Die with Zero” by Bill Perkins

In “Die with Zero”, subtitled “Getting All That You Can from Your Money and Your Life”, retired engineer Bill Perkins takes an analytical view about making your life grow as opposed to making your money grow. Letting opportunities pass you by for fear of squandering money leads many to squander their lives instead.

Instead of just keeping on earning and earning to maximize wealth, too many of us don’t give nearly as much thought as to maximizing what they can get out of that wealth — including what they can give to others while they are living, instead of waiting until they die.

As opposed to spending money on things, which excitement depreciates over time, the author advocates spending on experiences, which grow in value over time, due to the “memory dividend”. Perkins advocates a systematic approach for eliminating the fear of running out of money (the main reason people oversave and underenjoy) while maximizing your and your loved ones enjoyment of that money.

Being that the main idea is that your life is the sum of your experiences, you should put some thought into planning the kind of experiences you want. If you die with significant wealth but a scarcity of experiences, you worked a lot of hours just to accumulate money that you either never used or were too old to use.

You can waste your life by underspending. Life is not only about “accumulating”, it is also about “decumulating” or using the money to maximize your life which, in the end, is nothing more than the memories you make.

In a similar vein, giving inheritances early maximizes the impact of those inheritance on the recipients’ quality of life. The average age of heirs being about sixty, the money usually arrives too late to do the most good.

Your time is limited. The chief regrets of the dying are that they didn’t live their dreams more and spent too much time working, missing out on relationships and life experiences.

Courtesy Oak Street Health

Oak Street Health proudly opens its 17th primary care center in New York, offering personalized and integrated healthcare for seniors, including behavioral support and social determinants assistance, while achieving remarkable reductions in hospital admissions and readmission rates, reinforcing its commitment to quality care for the elderly endorsed by AARP.

Fueled by its mission to reimagine healthcare, the company operates an inventive healthcare paradigm that prizes quality of care above the mere provision of services, and steadfastly shoulders the complete financial risk for its patients.

With a footprint extending across 21 states and encompassing over 170 centers, Oak Street Health stands as the sole primary care provider proudly endorsed by the esteemed AARP. Notably, the company has been lauded with the prestigious 2022 Top Workplaces USA award by Energage, featured on Inc.’s inaugural list of Best-Led Companies in 2021, and felicitated as a recipient of the 2022 and 2021 Joy in MedicineTM Health System Recognition Program by the American Medical Association. For an in-depth exploration of Oak Street Health’s proven approach to care, please visit oakstreethealth.com.