Open Door Purchases Building in Sleepy Hollow

The Open Door Family Medical Center, currently housed on Beekman Avenue across from the Morse School, has recently purchased a building at the corner of Route 9 and New Broadway.

This larger space provides a better floor plan and more usable space than the current leased property on Beekman.  The Open Door won a federal Heal 19 Grant to fund the purchase. 

The Open Door hopes to provide expanded programs in their new facility, such as a residency program in family medicine for medical students. 

Desta Lakew, director of development for the Open Door, says that these new programs all need state approval. The residency program application was made jointly with Phelps Hospital and New York College of Medicine. 

Approval of a new residency program can take months or years, Ms. Deskew explained.  But the proposal made to the state envisions three medical students in the first year, an additional three the second, and three more in the third, for a total of nine students doing family medicine rotations through the Sleepy Hollow facility, under the supervision of Phelps  and the New York College of Medicine in Valhalla.

The building at One New Broadway, while recently renovated by Grotto Plumbing, has stood vacant for several years.  Extensive renovations will be needed in order to make it compatable with medical services. Because of the lengthly process of state approval, Lakew says that it's too early to tell when renovations will begin.

"We hope to be fully operational in our new space by 2015," Lakew says.

The Open Door Clinic on Beekman currently serves 3,300 patients in the Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow zip code, most of whom walk or take car services to the facility.  They have recently added a new physician to their staff, giving them to potential to serve 1,500 more patients.

The services offered include family medicine (all ages,) family planning, HIV services, laboratory serivces, mental health, podiatry, and WIC. 

The Open Door Family Medical Center  is a not-for-profit Federally Qualified Health Center and an Article 28 Diagnostic and Treatment Center operating ten service sites located in four of Westchester County's most densely populated Villages: Ossining and Sleepy Hollow on the Hudson River, Port Chester on the Long Island Sound; and Mt. Kisco located in the center of northern Westchester. Open Door is accredited by the Joint Commission and received Level 3 NCQA recognition as a patient centered medical home in 2009.

Most recently, September 2010, Open Door received notice of receipt of The HIMSS (Healthcare Information & Management Systems) Davies Awards of Excellence which recognizes excellence in the implementation of and value of health information technology. Open Door was recognized for quality reporting tools to achieve care quality and operational efficiency as well as for embracing knowledge sharing and collaboration with numerous partners to improve healthcare system efficiencies and benefits.

Most major insurance providers are accepted, and services are offered on a sliding scale.  No one is turned away, regardless of ability to pay. Over 93% of patients have incomes at or below 200% of the federal poverty level, earning incomes of less than $44,000 for a family of four.