News & Updates
The Ewing Street Health Center Expansion Program

Henry J. Austin Health Center is expanding our capacity to serve individuals and families in the city of Trenton by replacing our current, 1,300-usable-square-feet, rented facility with a new, 12,994 square foot, agency-owned facility designed specifically for the use of providing primary care and dental services. This new center will be located at the corner of Perry and Ewing Streets at 112 Ewing Street, literally next to our current program site.

The new Ewing Health Center is a two-story structure dedicated primarily to the delivery of medical and dental care, with a small proportion for administrative use. These services will continue to be, as all services at Ewing Health Center are now, integrally linked into all Henry J. Austin services and networks, including MIS systems, Quality Assurance review, patient support and transportation, and our entire array of enabling and specialty services. All regulations for HIPAA, JCAHO, the federal Bureau of Primary Health Care (BPHC), and the State of New Jersey DHSS/DCA continue to be strictly followed.

The Ewing Health Center is the site of Henry J. Austin’s federal Department of Health and Senior Services BPHC Section 330h “Health Care for the Homeless (HCH)” initiative, begun at Austin in 1986. We currently employ one full-time nurse practitioner at that site. An additional full-time (1.0 FTE) family
nurse practitioner will offer services when our new building is opened. For the first time we will offer the greater Trenton community pediatric care and dental services at our Ewing Street facility. Additionally, with this great new expansion in total agency space, we will have a greater ability to absorb and provide for our clinical expansion strategies.

The new facility is organized by units. On the first floor are three unit areas: mental health and social services, reception and MIS, and records and conference rooms. The mental health and social services unit is to the right as one enters this new facility. It will offer privacy, as the cluster of offices will be accessible by a central door into the area. Upon entering the area, the visitor will see the waiting room directly in front of him or her. The waiting room connects to a center “hub” where reception can be found. Along the hub, as the “spokes of the wheel,” so to speak, are five offices and one medical exam room. The exam room will be used primarily for HIV counseling and testing.

To the left as one enters this new facility will be a large primary waiting room and the main reception / security desks for the building. This unit/area also houses the first floor rest rooms and one medical exam room to be used primarily for patient labs. We have found through experience at our main facility at Warren Street that having patient labs separate from the other units improves flow throughout the program and decreases patient waiting times.

Forward as one enters this new facility, walking past main reception on the left and the mental health unit on the right, one finds, along the back wall, the third first-floor “unit.” This area will house the main office for MIS staff and equipment, a room for building utilities and mechanicals, a multi-purpose conference room, a staff lounge, and a secure medical records room.

Using either of two staircases, visitors can access the second floor of this new facility. Here are four additional units. From the center stairway, these units are, clockwise from bottom left, dental services, adult medicine, administrative offices, and pediatric care. Each of these units is accessed through a main entrance that brings the visitor to separate reception and a private waiting area for that unit. The dental services unit includes three dental rooms, two rooms for hygienists, one modeling and sterilization room, one room for developing x-rays, and one staff office. The adult medicine unit includes eight medical exam rooms (two of these are specialty exam rooms), one observation room, and one staff office. The pediatrics unit includes five medical exam rooms, one observation room, and one staff office.

Each of these three patient areas / units also has its own rest room facility as well as two closets, one for clean and one for soiled linen. Additionally, there are four separate storage areas throughout both floors and a centrally-located elevator in the middle foyer. The first floor is also smaller in square footage, as outside the building on Perry Street are two handicap parking spaces, directly in front of the facility’s second first-floor entrance. We feel that this design takes into account all regulations for medical outpatient facilities as well as the lessons we have learned throughout our thirty-four years of operation.

Related Links:

• Press Release: Austin Wins Federal Expansion Grant