By Taylor Boyd
Patrick County Urgent Care shuttered its doors Friday, Nov. 14, but owner Dr. Richard Cole said plans are underway for the facility to reopen next year as a rural health clinic.
“We had been anticipating converting urgent care into a rural health clinic, probably for several months now, because we noticed our reimbursement is better at our main office, which is a rural health clinic, versus urgent care. So that was kind of in the works,” he said.
Cole said the sudden temporary closure was due to staffing issues. While two nurse practitioners were recently hired, two others who worked at urgent care resigned within the last three months.
“We ran out of practitioners,” he said.
The decision to convert the facility was also partially driven by Braden Health’s plans to reopen the Stuart Community Hospital and its emergency room, Cole said.
“With the hospital coming in and the emergency room opening, it’s not necessary to have stat labs and X-ray, which was not a profit for us. We were doing that to serve the needs of the county,” he said.
The current plan, Cole said, is to consolidate all of the services at Patrick County Family Practice. To help accommodate patients, the practice hours have been extended Monday through Thursday to ensure everyone who needs assistance can receive it.
“Sometime next year, after we get our new nurse practitioners credentialed, oriented, and trained, we’ll be opening up that space as Stuart Family Practice,” he said, adding that he estimates the reopening will occur sometime in the spring.
With the change, Cole said the county will have two rural health clinics — Patrick County Family Practice and Stuart Family Practice.
“Rural health clinics are a special designation where you get the all-inclusive rate, you get enhanced reimbursement. That will help us financially at that office,” he said.
While the urgent care’s name and designation will change, Cole said walk-in patients will still be accepted.
When weighing the pros and cons of converting urgent care, Cole said insurance-related issues arose.
“Health insurances require a separate co-pay for urgent care versus family practice centers. For example, the co-pay would be $20 at family practice and $50 at urgent care. We tried to charge the same co-pay over at urgent care, and then the insurance company would short us $30, saying, ‘Oh, you’re supposed to collect $50 instead of $20, so we’re not going to pay you that extra $30,’” he said.
Because of this, Cole said patients will pay a lower co-pay while receiving essentially the same services at the future Stuart Family Practice, except for stat labs and X-rays.
“When we first opened urgent care, there wasn’t any place to get stat CBC (complete blood count) or chemistry panel or an X-ray, so people would come to our office for a sprained ankle and then have to go to Mt. Airy to get an X-ray of the ankle. We were missing out on a lot of business that way,” he said.
The Patrick County Med Spa, which is located in the same building as urgent care, will remain open, as will the Caring Hearts Free Clinic.
