What Powers the MedQuarter’s Success? Its People
Meet four medical professionals who help this unique medical district provide top-notch health care in Cedar Rapids, IA.
Neighboring downtown Cedar Rapids, the MedQuarter Regional Medical District offers a convenient location for high-quality health care. The professionals providing that care enjoy the benefits of the MedQ, too.
Just Right
Mercy Medical Center anchors the southeast corner of the MedQ, where Alison McNeill is a nurse practitioner in the neurosurgery clinic. She evaluates and treats patients with neck and back pain who have often been referred by the emergency department or urgent care centers.
McNeill’s husband, Dr. Steve Schopick, is a neurosurgeon who treats patients with issues of the brain or spine. The two are newcomers to Cedar Rapids, and both began working at Mercy Medical Center last year.
“I was very impressed when I met with the staff and administration at Mercy,” Schopick says. “Being a smaller, independent hospital, they were able to make decisions more quickly than I’ve experienced at larger institutions.”
McNeill says she found the administration and providers at Mercy to be extremely welcoming when she visited. “It seemed like everyone had a close working relationship,” she says. “Also, Mercy has invested in some of the latest technology, so more spine surgery can be completed here, rather than having to refer patients to outside facilities.”
She says she was initially drawn to Cedar Rapids for its “not too big, not too small” size. “I enjoy road biking,” she says. “I liked all the access to trails in the area.”
“I like that there is so much going on, both medically and recreationally, in a small area,” Schopick says. He appreciates, for instance, the convenience of a specialty market on his way home.
“The MedQ area means that patients we see are able to have world-class medical care without leaving the comfort and convenience of Cedar Rapids,” he says.
One-Stop Health Care
Dr. Thomas Richardson is a urologic surgeon and serves as president of the board of directors for Physicians’ Clinic of Iowa, located in the middle of the MedQ. He moved to Cedar Rapids in 1999 when PCI was in its infancy and has been here ever since.
“We call our building a medical mall,” Richardson says. “There’s one-stop shopping, with all the different medical specialties in individual offices, connected with a main corridor and a common area.”
In the same building, patients can access other services like lab, X-ray and physical therapy. The convenience for providers is significant, too.
“Many people work in a metropolitan area serving multiple hospitals that may be several miles apart, with a lot of time spent driving between them,” he says. “Here, there’s very little downtime. We’re either in our offices working or at the hospitals working, without a lot of wasted time and energy.”
That extends to communication among providers.
“If another provider and I are sharing the care of a patient, instead of sending an email or trying to catch them on the phone, I can literally walk down the hall or across the skywalk and check in with them about the patient’s needs,” Richardson says.
Within Reach
UnityPoint Health – St. Luke’s Hospital anchors another end of the 55-square-block district, and Amy Veit has been a nurse there since 2008. Veit serves as a performance improvement adviser, helping lead efforts in overall quality improvement. She oversees the Magnet designation process for nursing quality and patient outcomes.
“St. Luke’s is a four-time Magnet designated facility,” she says. “That’s quite rare; only about 2% of hospitals in the nation have achieved this.”
Veit says St. Luke’s has an aspirational culture, that even though it is already doing great things, it can always do better. “So, we’re going to celebrate, take a breath and then jump right back in to see how we can get to that next step,” she says.
She says she appreciates the central location of the MedQ for patients and says everyone there is looking out for patient needs. She also enjoys convenient services, like an automotive shop where she can drop her car off in the morning and then walk to work while it is being repaired.
“There’s space outside for people to have their lunch or take a walk,” Veit says. “There’s consistency and safety, so people feel like they can be out in the neighborhood, which really makes it nice.”
Get to Know Cedar Rapids
Want to learn more about living and working in Cedar Rapids, IA? Check out the latest edition of Livability Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
