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Date: 9/8/2021
CHICOPEE – Dr. Ashley Crane and Dr. Jennifer Jordan have opened River’s Edge Primary Care on 821 East Main St. in Chicopee. This is the first primary care office in Western Mass. operated by Nurse Practitioners.
Crane and Jordan said they first met when Crane was a student in the Doctor of Nurse Practice (DNP) program at Elms College. Jordan, who was working as clinical faculty at the time, said that Crane was assigned to work in her practice due to her exemplary abilities in the classroom.
“Ashley is brilliant and the best student I had in my time teaching,” said Jordan.
The two worked in the same practice as primary care providers, bonding over their similar backgrounds and medical views.
Once Massachusetts passed a law in January to allow Nurse Practitioners to run independent practices without a physician, the two said they decided to team up on their own practice. A major motivating force was providing care where it often isn’t provided.
“We wanted to be here because there’s a huge crisis in the Chicopee area with access to care. It felt like we could be useful in helping to serve underserved areas,” said Jordan.
When it comes to opening their own practice, Crane and Jordan said they are trying to rewrite the preconceived notions about DNPs.
“Not a lot of people understand what DNP means or what we are capable of doing. Even though we don’t have MD [Doctor of Medicine] behind our name, we are primary care providers,” said Crane. She said that River’s Edge provides patients with the same foundation as other primary care facilities, including assessing, treating, diagnosing and ordering testing when needed.
On top of those common staples, Jordan said that their DNP experience gives them an entirely different lens called Advanced Nursing.
“Advanced Nursing focuses on the whole person, not just the symptoms and the pathology. We specialize in taking care of the whole person, the whole family and the whole community,” said Jordan.
This includes looking at patients care from the contextualized view of what they can afford and how it impacts their surrounding environment, according to Crane.
“Not everyone fits into a diagnosis or a check box, it’s always multi-faceted,” said Crane. They explained how they want to take the hierarchy out of medicine by establishing human relationships where both DNPs are empathetic and honest with their patients’ dilemmas. According to Jordan, their practice has removed the common 15-minute visit structure to allow optimal time for patients to receive the care they need.
Crane and Jordan said they plan to implement other new measures with River’s Edge. Group Medical Visits would be a key inclusion. Jordan explained that these visits would incorporate multiple personal and medical topics, giving patients a platform to ask questions and learn from other patients going through similar situations. The duo shared that they also seek to add a Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner to help in mental health treatment.
When reflecting on the progress the two have made, Jordan said she hopes this is the start of more DNP-led practices
“This was a lot of hard work. We’ve had to overcome a lot of barriers, including a lot of unnecessary barriers. We hope we are paving the way for future DNPs in Massachusetts,” said Jordan.
Readers can learn more River’s Edge Primary Care at https://riversedgepcp.com/ or by calling 409-6500.