On Thursday, Orlando Health held a ribbon cutting for their new eight-exam room adult primary health care center in Vero Beach. Staff told WPTV they hope this new facility can help reduce long wait times and help with primary care shortages in Indian River County.<\/p>\n
WATCH BELOW:’The Vero Beach need really stood out,’ Dr. Meron Kristos tells WPTV’s Tyler Hatfield<\/p>\n
Aaron Bridges, assistant vice president of Orlando Health, told WPTV the facility can take 40 patients a day and has opportunity to grow.<\/p>\n
The new health care center will be led by husband-and-wife physicians Dr. Roberto Gabitto and Dr. Meron Kristos.<\/p>\n
“We’ve met in residency at the former St. Vincent’s hospital in New York City,\u201d said Gabitto.<\/p>\n
Both Gabitto and Kristos said primary care access is limited in Indian River County and throughout Florida.<\/p>\n
“One of the biggest things we’ve heard about Florida was a need for primary care doctors,\u201d said Kristos. \u201cBut the Vero Beach need really stood out.”<\/p>\n
According to the Cleveland Clinic, Indian River is designated a health professional shortage area and medically underserved area.<\/p>\n
Kristos notes this shortage could lead to longer wait times for patients.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are waiting months and months,\u201d said Kristos.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an issue neighbor Christine Stenback said she\u2019s experienced since moving to Indian River County nearly three decades ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I moved here with my daughter, it was a problem. Even then, there was a small number of primary care physicians, not really any specialists at that time,\u201d said Stenback. \u201cWe retained our doctors in Fort Lauderdale, and we would have to travel back for her, she needed specialists, and we would travel back for me, and that’s never really changed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kristos hopes this new facility can help with reducing wait times for neighbors and provide more access to quality health care.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’re able to provide as a quick timeframe to see us to get established, and then when something pops up, you have somebody to go see,\u201d said Kristos.<\/p>\n
The Orlando Health Physician Associates- Adult Medicine is located at 3745 11th Circle Suite 101 in Vero Beach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Thursday, Orlando Health held a ribbon cutting for their new eight-exam room adult primary health care center…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":320228,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[139,141,140],"class_list":["post-320227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320227\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}