In my short time as Medical Director of the Hartford HealthCare Ayer Neuroscience Institute, I have seen a lot of activity as we strive to provide the very best neurological care to patients across the state and beyond.

An integral key to reaching our goal is providing appropriate access to our services, close to home for our patients. That’s why the recent opening of our Headache Center in West Hartford is so important. The official opening in June and the ribbon-cutting ceremony on July 13 symbolize the future of our institute.

While neurological care will always be needed in our hospitals, it is also important to note that many neurological disorders can be treated on an outpatient basis (headaches, movement disorders, pain, sleep, just to name a few) and do not require hospital-based care. These patients don’t need to drive into a large city, find a spot in a parking garage and navigate through a hospital to get the care that they need. They want convenient access to our services, and they want it as close to home as possible.

So as Hartford HealthCare’s footprint grows and changes, so must our Institute’s. Whether it is east, west, north or south, the rural east or an urban setting, our institute needs to be prepared to grow along with our healthcare system.

This transformation is most certainly underway. The other day I was looking over a list of our Institute’s locations. While we remain firmly situated within our five hospitals, as we must be, we also have 22 ambulatory locations, housing our headache, movement disorder, neurology, neuroscience, neurosurgery, sleep and pain centers.

With the growing healthcare trend towards outpatient settings, this list will no doubt continue to grow. In fact, following our ribbon-cutting at Blue Back Square in West Hartford, we will next be concentrating on opening a headache center in Waterford. The Eastern Connecticut shoreline is a relatively new area for us, and a great opportunity to put our best foot forward and gain the loyalty of a new group of patients.

Things are moving fast in healthcare – gone are the days when patients would travel vast distances out of loyalty to their hospital. Patients are now customers, researching what services are best and close to home. If they can leave work, go shopping and stop by a health center next door before they go home, even better.  I am happy to say that the physicians and staff of the HHC Ayer Neuroscience Institute are embracing this change, this new era in healthcare, and positioning us well for the future