By Ayla Yersel Vermont Business MagazineA new urgent care clinic, Clear Choice MD, opened its new office in St. Albans on Wednesday, June 24, as part of the company’s broader expansion into Vermont.
This is the company’s second big opening in Vermont in one month. Clear Choice MD opened its first Vermont office in Berlin in early June, and plans to expand its offices to Rutland, Burlington and Brattleboro later this year, as well as into Maine and upstate New York, said Clear Choice MD founder Marcus Hampers.
The clinic, which is open from 7 am to 7 pm, seven days a week, offers “less costly, more convenient” care to the people of Vermont, Hampers said.
Dr. Marcus Hampers cuts the ribbon at the opening of Clear Choice MD's St. Albans office. Image: Clear Choice MD
Unlike primary care offices, which treat and manage chronic diseases and focus on health maintenance, urgent care clinics provide treatment for non-life-threatening, episodic illness and injury. Urgent care centers do not provide the level of care given in emergency departments, however, Hampers said.
“We can treat anything that you might consider calling your doctor to go see because you’re not feeling well,” he said. “In fact, we can probably do more than what they can do in the office in terms of repairing lacerations and broken bones and IV fluids, because most primary care doctors don’t have that capacity in their office.”
Clear Choice MD, which is establishing a large footprint in Vermont, aims to fill the need for urgent care facilities in the state.
While there has been an “explosion in urgent care” nationwide, with over 8,000 urgent care centers across the US, the trend has not carried over to Vermont. With only two or three clinics across the state, Vermont has been “grossly underserved” when it comes to urgent care, he said.
“If you travel outside of New England, you’ll probably see one on every corner,” he said. “Vermont suffers from a shortage of primary care providers, so there is a significant need in Vermont.”
Hampers, who has been practicing emergency medicine throughout Vermont and New Hampshire for the last 20 years, remains on active clinical staff in the emergency department at Dartmouth, as well as on the faculty at the medical school.
In those 20 years, Hampers said he has seen emergency departments become increasingly overcrowded by patients who were unable to obtain an appointment with a primary care provider.
“The cost of treating patients in the emergency department with non-emergencies is astronomical,” he said. “It approaches ten times the cost of the treatment from an urgent care center.”
Tragically, when the emergency departments become overburdened, the sickest patients who need to be seen the quickest sometimes have their care delayed, he said.
Hampers said the clinic will create at least 100 new jobs in Vermont.
“Even though we hired national contractors, they’ve been hiring all local subcontractors,” he said. “So we’re supporting the economy by hiring local people. And they’ve been outstanding- we’ve been so pleased.”
Hampers said he has already hired several physicians, but is actively recruiting for future markets.
“The recruitment process is like a full-time job for me,” he said. “From my perspective, [finding the right providers] is the most important part of the process.”
Urgent care clinics across the country sometimes have a bad image, he said.
“They’ve been referred to as ‘doc-in-a-box’. Some other providers are sub-par, and I don’t want that to be our case,” he said. “I think given my background, I’m qualified to select the right providers. You might not necessarily find that with other urgent care companies who are not owned or led by physicians.”
As for the Clear Choice MD’s expansion into VT, Hampers said there is no limit to its plan.
“We have a really ambitious growth plan,” he said. “We’re just going to keep expanding, and we may be acquiring some other facilities as well.”