Boutique-style healthcare?

By Stephanie Bouchard | October 4, 2011 | 4:19 PM

New urgent care clinic offers luxury hotel comfort and good medicine

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NEW YORK CITY – Walk-in health clinics and urgent care clinics are growing at a fast pace in the United States, their popularity fueled by convenience and affordability. A new urgent care clinic, Medhattan, is set to open this month in the shadow of Ground Zero. Its owners hope their facility will set a new standard of care.

“It’s very hard to contain healthcare costs, so you can’t do it the way you’ve been doing it. You’ve got to think of new paradigms,” said Leslie Miller, MD, co-founder of Medhattan.

“The reality is that when you remove yourself from that hospital system, you suddenly find that relatively affordably you can really provide top-notch care,” said Medhattan’s other founder, Alicia Salzer, MD.

In most aspects, Medhattan is like many urgent care clinics. It offers services that fall somewhere between doctor’s office and emergency room visits. Patients can get a flu shot for $50 or an internal sonogram for $150. As is usual for walk-in clinics, prices are posted. The clinic accepts some health insurances, as well as cash and credit card payments. It is open 365 days a year. Patients can make appointments or just walk in.

What sets Medhattan apart is that unlike many walk-in or urgent care clinics, it is staffed by over a dozen physicians, rather than nurse practitioners or physician’s assistants, as is the norm. Miller hand-picked New York City-area emergency room physicians as partners in the clinic. “When patients are sick, they want to see doctors,” said Miller.

Medhattan is also different from many walk-in or urgent care clinics in that it has been designed to maximize the patient experience. “Patients want a patient-centric experience that caters to their needs. Because of crowding and because of finances, hospitals are increasingly unable to do that,” said Salzer.

“So much of healthcare is delivered in an environment that has become enormously and unreasonably uncomfortable to patients,” she said, so

Medhattan draws on the customer experience of a luxury hotel, offering comfortable spaces, healthy snacks and wellness services such as acupuncture and massage. The staff has received customer service training.

Medhattan’s spa feel may be unique among urgent care clinics, but the trend among such clinics to offer an enhanced patient experience is not new, said Laura Gaskill, communications director, Urgent Care Association of America. Urgent care centers are always looking for “other ways to make patients know they’re cared for,” she said. Offerings range from smoothie makers to movie theaters.

The boutique-ness of Medhattan doesn’t come at boutique prices, Miller and Salzer said. Medhattan service rates are set close to reimbursement rates for reasonable and customary charges Miller said. “It’s a little bit more than what insurances actually pay out, perhaps, but it’s a reasonable amount of money,” she said.

“Our visits start at $200, whereas the emergency room could potentially be $800 just to walk in,” Salzer said. “$200 …. is a completely viable option for (patients) to know that they’re seeing a really good doctor and that they’re going to get in and out fast. That’s totally worth it to them.”

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