Erickson: For starters, there’s Centricity, our state-of-the-art electronic medical records system that lets your doctors tie together your entire medical history. This system can alert your doctors to dangerous drug interactions, or recalls. It could even save your life in an emergency. Say you’re traveling out-of- state and end up needing a hospital. Using Centricity, your doctor back home can send your records where you need them to go. That saves time when time counts, and it cuts down on the risk of mistakes. You won’t find Centricity anywhere else.

Of course the most important aspect of Erickson Health^SM is the level of expertise our medical professionals provide. Our doctors specialize in care for older adults, and they’re constantly in communication—so you have a whole nationwide network of medical experts behind you.

Tribune: Speaking of doctors, how does an appointment at the community Medical Center compare to the average doctor’s office?

Erickson: Your Erickson Health^SM doctors don’t look at their watch and say, ‘Gosh, my twelve minutes with this patient is up.’ Your Erickson Health^SM physician spends three times as long with a patient than the average doctor. Now, the reason he can give you so much face-to-face, personalized care is simple. The resident-to-doctor ratio at an Erickson community is five times better than the norm. As a result, people who live in our communities need about half as much acute care as Americans in the same age group. They also use hospitals one-third less than average.

Of course, if you’re very happy with your outside doctor, you don’t have to give him or her up just because you choose to live at an Erickson community.

If it suits you, can use the Medical Center for blood work, flu shots, or when you need a same-day appointment and your outside doctor can’t squeeze you in. If you have no other reason to move to an Erickson community, your health would be a great one.