Vanderbilt Health is rolling out a new Acute Care Center at its One Hundred Oaks campus this August, aiming squarely at the gray zone between a routine clinic visit and a full-on trip to the emergency department. The referral-only clinic is tailored for established adult Vanderbilt patients who need rapid diagnostics or same-day specialist input but do not quite rise to the level of an ER case. To start, it will run weekday evenings, 2 to 10 p.m. Monday through Friday, with on-site testing, emergency department-trained staff, and a ground LifeFlight ambulance ready for any patients who need to be transferred for inpatient care.
According to Vanderbilt Health, the new center will only see adult Vanderbilt patients who are formally referred by Vanderbilt clinicians. Walk-up patients will be turned away, and referrals from outside providers will not be accepted. “We hope this new center will provide an intermediate option so that our patients can receive these services in a timely manner and in a setting other than the ED,” Dr. Jane Freedman, Vanderbilt’s deputy CEO and chief health system officer, said in the health system’s announcement.
What the center will offer
As reported by WSMV, the clinic will be staffed by emergency medicine physicians and nurses and will use a newly acquired lab analyzer to run rapid tests, including high-sensitivity troponin and quantitative d-dimer. A LifeFlight ground ambulance will remain on site for patients who end up needing transfer for inpatient care. Vanderbilt says its initial hours are 2 to 10 p.m. Monday through Friday, and that those hours could be expanded if demand justifies it.
Who can use it and how to get referred
Per Vanderbilt Health, clinicians can refer eligible adult patients by calling the Transfer Center or by scheduling through Cadence within Epic. The new setup is aimed primarily at medically complex patients, such as those recovering from recent surgeries, receiving active cancer treatment, living with organ transplants, or managing multiple comorbidities, who need an expedited, diagnostically rich workup rather than a traditional emergency room stay.
Why Vanderbilt says it's needed
Dr. Stephen Russ, associate professor of Emergency Medicine and senior executive medical director of Vanderbilt LifeFlight, told WSMV that rapid advances across U.S. health care have “unintentionally created a care gap” for a group of patients whose needs fall between routine and critical. He said the new center is meant to offer that intermediate-acuity population “a convenient, affordable, less intimidating and diagnostically rich care option for early intervention and risk stratification.”
What to expect next
Vanderbilt plans to pilot the One Hundred Oaks Acute Care Center this summer, then track demand and patient outcomes before deciding whether to expand its hours or replicate the model in other locations. For now, patients are being advised to talk with their Vanderbilt clinicians about whether a referral to the new center might fit urgent but nonemergency needs.
