In the decade spanning 1997 to 2007, the annual number of emergency room visits grew by 23 percent.
Fewer than half of those ER visits required a surgical procedure, according to the latest survey from the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“For patients with chronic problems, it”™s not a good place for you to go to do maintenance care,” said Dr. Daryl McClendon, laboratory director at urgent care facility Doctors Express, which opens in Hartsdale this week. “In essence, the urgent care center will help free up the emergency departments for those conditions that are so acute that they would require surgery or specialization.”
Changes in health care legislation coupled with the economy and employability have pigeonholed ER departments into “being used more now as a source for primary care.”
John Spicer, president of Sound Shore Health System in New Rochelle, this past fall told the Westchester County Business Journal “that our bread and butter financially is the inpatient business,” but voluminous demands on the outpatient side have heavily impacted the hospital”™s ability to sustain itself.
McClendon said urgent care models such as Doctors Express “fill the gap between what the family practitioner is not able to handle and what is not serious enough to go to the emergency department.”
WESTMED Medical Group last summer opened an urgent care center in Rye and operates one other center on Westchester Avenue in White Plains.
The newly developed Doctors Express in the Dalewood Shopping Plaza at 359 N. Central Ave in Hartsdale will be master developer and franchisee Dan Purugganan”™s first Westchester County location; he is scouting sites in the Hudson Valley and in Fairfield County in Connecticut. Doctors Express is based in Towson, Md.
Each location costs about $500,000 to $600,000 for the brick-and-mortar buildout and equipment with “extra dollars for working capital to support ongoing operations until the patient base is up and running,” Purugganan said.
The former vice president of finance and business analytics for Yankee Candle Co. Inc. called the urgent care market in Westchester “untapped.”
Choosing a convenient location next to a Pathmark food store with easy accessibility and ample parking were strong motivators in Purugganan”™s site selection.
Westchester County could feasibly accommodate about five Doctors Express sites, he said.
McClendon, who served as director of family practice at a subsidiary of Catskill Regional Medical Center, said one Hudson Valley county in particular has the demographic and need for the business model.
“I used to work and live in Sullivan County, so I am familiar with Orange County,” he said. “Being in it or driving through it ”¦ it”™s an area where if people have good care, they”™re willing to drive a long distance to get to it.”
Also running the Hartsdale location is Medical Director George DiRago, who most recently served as an emergency medicine physician at St. Francis Hospital”™s Level II Trauma Center in Poughkeepsie.
“It”™s a medical clinic, but at the same time, it”™s a business proposition,” Purugganan said. “The doctors will focus on the clinical side of the practice and I would focus more on the business aspect, from advertising to financing and accounting.”
