On any typical day, a steady stream of patients can be seen trickling in and out of Patient Plus Urgent Care on Florida Boulevard by foot, bike and car. As detailed in Business Report’s latest Trends in Health Care issue, the clinic, located just seven blocks from Baton Rouge General’s Mid City campus, opened in November in an attempt to help fill the health care void left by the shuttering of the hospital’s emergency room last spring.
With a fresh façade and bright new branding on its building, the clinic’s arrival in the neighborhood has sparked new optimism for surrounding residents and businesses owners, says Vishal Vasanji, co-CEO and chief operating officer of Point of Care Health Group, parent company of the clinic. For example, Vasanji says, the automotive repair shop across the street from the clinic is planning renovations to enhance its curb appeal and the overall appearance of the block.
Investing in the community was precisely the idea Vasanji and Dr. Rubin Patel, formerly the head of Ochsner Baton Rouge’s urgent care department, had in mind when they decided to establish their flagship clinic. The two weren’t initially looking at Mid City as a place to open their first clinic—which is one of many that have popped up in Baton Rouge in recent years, in line with a national trend for the rapidly growing industry. But when market conditions changed, so did their plans.
“I was a resident at Earl K. Long [charity hospital] and also did shifts at Baton Rouge General, so when the ER shut down, I felt like there was a void,” says Patel, Point of Care co-CEO and chief medical officer. “Realizing that ER visits are mostly primary care or urgent care related, we thought this would be a great start.”
With both their families involved in the hotel industry, the friends teamed up to form Point of Care Health Group in November 2014. Their aim was to combine their collective hospitality experience with Vasanji’s knowledge of the financial world, having run several other successful businesses, and Patel’s background managing urgent care clinics to create a patient-driven business model.
With a focus on hotel-like hospitality in every aspect of their business, from the way people are greeted at the reception desk to the patient experience in an examination room, the two want Point of Care to break the mold of what people have come to expect from urgent care clinics. Standing out may be key in a market with ever-growing competition among urgent care clinics.
For more than a decade, Baton Rouge has seen the proliferation of urgent care clinics driven by a constantly changing health care environment.
Urgent care clinics have increasingly become an attractive option for patients and physicians alike, locally and nationally, as each struggles to navigate the complexities of high deductible health care plans as well as the increasing size and scope of hospital groups. For example, General Health System, which owns Baton Rouge General Medical Center, and New Orleans-based Ochsner Health System announced in March that they had formed a new strategic partnership that they say will create a “combined integrated system that includes joint governance, management and financial integration.”
“In Texas, every corner has an urgent care clinic,” Vasanji says. “It hasn’t come to Louisiana and Baton Rouge at that rate yet, so we saw an opportunity for us to get in and establish a presence really quickly, and we were confident in our ability to do it. We also saw people were getting tired of the same old options.”
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