Brownstone Clinics-Hartford Hospital

Founded in 1854, the Brownstone Clinics was established to provide comprehensive ambulatory care services to under-served residents of Hartford, CT’s South End community. In 2014, the Brownstone provided a total of 56,824 total visits for about 11,000 patients. Almost all of the patients, well over 80%, were un-insured (8%) or under-insured (80%). Healthcare services include the Adult Primary Care (APC), Community Care (HIV), surgery, orthopedics, cardiology, endocrine, vascular, urology, social services, and dental. There is no pharmacy located on site.

Hartford

Hartford is the capital of the state of CT. Connecticut as a state continues to rank first in terms of Per Capita Household Income but Hartford area residents face a myriad of challenges to productive daily life: extreme levels of poverty, unemployment, homelessness, lack of accessible, affordable transportation and low levels of education achieved. Hartford continuously has the highest unemployment rate in the entire state. Much of Hartford is designated as a Medically Underserved Area (MUA) and is also a Health Professional Shortage Area (HPSA).

Clinical Practice

Dr. Wang’s experiential practice site is the Adult Primary Care Practice (APC), a hospital-based outpatient clinic affiliated with Hartford Hospital in Hartford. The APC is a community-based urban safety net health system of Hartford Hospital and a major academic teaching site for the University of Connecticut Schools of Medicine, Pharmacy, and Nursing. Dr. Wang is the only pharmacist embedded in the practice. As a member of the health-care team, she provides patient-centered support to patients and staff to ensure medication efficacy and safety and to enhance a value-based and outcomes-driven care. She established a comprehensive medication therapy management and a tobacco treatment referral service and contributes to the design and implementation of new initiatives and outcome measures of programs targeting population health. Dr. Wang mentors and precepts pharmacy students and residents and strongly supports their role as active members of team-based care participating as pharmacist-extenders in providing patient-centered pharmaceutical care.  

The Adult Primary Care practice provides comprehensive care and support services to a predominantly medically under-served Medicaid and Medicare (75%) and uninsured (25%) ethnic population. Over 75% of the patient population are Hispanic (predominantly Puerto Rican), with 70% Spanish-speaking only. The practice provides services to 5,573 unique individuals with an average of 5 annual visits per patient. Patients who come to the APC clinic are individuals with medically complex needs, many of whom need to see specialists. The vast majority of patients are not coming for preventive care.  Instead, they’re on complicated medical regimens with multiple chronic problems. The practice offers urgent care and chronic care services staffed by 5 full-time board-certified general internal medicine physicians, 36 UConn internal medicine residents, a clinical pharmacist, 2 nurse practitioners, 4 registered nurses, a social worker, a clinical psychologist, a nutritionist, and 12 support staff.