Timing Right As Fontaine Center Increases Services On Lower Cape

As the weather turns, Cape Cod’s population rises with the thermometer and nowhere is the contrast greater than in the Outer/Lower Cape. The roads are narrower, year-round facilities can range from sparse to non-existent and obtaining comprehensive medical service can involve a time-consuming drive even without factoring in summer congestion.

Well, more summer folk, as well as year-rounders, now may be able to avoid that long slog to Hyannis. Located at Exit 11 on the Mid-Cape Highway, they’ll find Cape Cod Healthcare’s farthest outpost, The Fontaine Medical Center in Harwich, offering an increased array of services.

These include:

• Availability of NRI and PET/CT Scans three days a week due to a new joint arrangement with Shields MRI (their trailer also is available at CCHC’s Sandwich Health Center);
• New specialist services, including a board-certified orthopedist, Dr. Richard K. Mannal;
• And additional full-time primary care coverage provided by Nurse Practitioner Pat Ryan-Blanchard, MS, RNC, NP, who recently joined the staff of internist Dr. John Shackelford after many years at The Breast Care Center at Cape Cod Hospital.

At its current location on Long Pond Road since 1981, Fontaine offers primary care, urgent care walk-in and endocrinology. (Emergency patients still must go to the hospital in Hyannis.) Also provided within the building are hospital services including Radiology/Imaging (x-ray, mammography, ultrasound, and bone density), human services, C-Lab and Physical Therapy. Available on a limited basis are some specialty services like Dermatology, Orthopedics, Podiatry and minor surgeries. And the site also is home to the Boo McGraw Rehabilitation Center with full-service physical therapy staffed by Cape Cod Hospital.

More than 28,000 patients from Yarmouth to Provincetown are seen at Fontaine each year. That includes those who are regular patients of one of the six physicians and three nurse practitioners on staff as part of CCHC’s Medical Affiliates of Cape Cod (MACC). It also includes the hundreds of walk-in patients who are in the area on vacation or have summer homes here.

Family Practice physician Dr. Nevine Henin is the designated doctor for the walk-in Urgent Center. Practice Manager Rhonda Litwinowich notes that during the summer, when the Walk-In service can draw 80-100 patients a day, additional providers and staff are added to cover the increased volume.

Another Nurse Practitioner, Karin Dauphinee, RN, MSN, ANP-C, works with Dr. William Sargent, a family practice physician. She says having the physician-nurse practitioner model of practice expands the offerings to patients and allows patients more appointment times because “you’re getting two for one.”

The Fontaine medical staff also includes these physicians: Internists Brian Reagan and Monica Smith and endocrinologist Ziad Farah, plus Nurse Practitioner Josephine Whelan, RNBC, FNP.

Fontaine went through two earlier incarnations before arriving at its current name. It started out in the 1970s as Medicenter Five, to reflect the five Lower Cape towns that had launched the facility–Harwich, Brewster, Chatham, Orleans and Eastham. Fund-raising made it possible to create the current building capable of serving residents of Wellfleet, Truro and Provincetown as well as the original quintet. In 1996, Medicenter Five became part of Cape Cod Healthcare under a new name, Long Pond Medical Center.

In 1999, a $2 million gift from philanthropists Ray and Marie Fontaine provided major funding for a 10,000-square-foot addition completed in 2005 and thus the final change in name.