A trip to the emergency room for a broken bone or other non-life threatening issue often leads to hours-long waits and an unpleasant experience for many patients.
Dr. Michael Gutman, and his wife Yahel Gutman, a nurse, are trying to improve that experience by allowing patients to bypass the ER altogether.
Partners personally and professionally for three years, the Gutmans have already made their mark on the urgent care industry. After Michael Gutman heard about urgent care centers in other parts of the region and country, he set out to open one on his own.
Shortly after attending a how-to seminar for the urgent care industry, the Gutmans opened New England Urgent Care in West Hartford in 2010.
Now their business is growing with new locations in Simsbury and Enfield.
“Because we both have an emergency medicine background, it distinguishes us from the vast majority of walk-in centers,” Michael Gutman said. “Our urgent care is a certified urgent care center, and there are only a handful of those in Connecticut. Most that put out the urgent care sign couldn’t achieve that designation because they don’t have the spectrum of care that we have, which comes from our emergency medicine background.”
Michael Gutman was born in Israel and grew up in Canada. After completing almost seven years of post-graduate level training after medical school, he immigrated to the U.S. in 1995, and started working at St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford. In 2002, Gutman joined the U.S. Army as an emergency physician. He was deployed to Iraq twice and to Bosnia once, all in a five-year period. He continues to work as an attending emergency department physician at St. Francis Hospital on a part-time basis.
Yahel Gutman was born and raised in Israel, trained as a trauma nurse and worked as an assistant nurse manager in a large Jerusalem hospital. She moved to the U.S. in 2006 and got a nursing job within St. Francis’ emergency department, where she met her future husband. After just two years at St. Francis, Yahel was honored with the prestigious Florence Nightingale Award for excellency in nursing in 2009.
The Gutmans soon decided to put their emergency medical training to use in an entrepreneurial way.
“We both had this joint power and knowledge and experience,” Yahel Gutman said. “When we put it together, we were 100 percent sure we could do it.”
Michael Gutman said he wanted his urgent care model to be run differently than an emergency room.
“In emergency medicine, if you’re dying, [the emergency room] is the best place to be in the world,” he said. “But it also became a victim of its own success. The growth in emergency medicine has been astonishing since its establishment in the 1980s. There’s been almost a 10 percent growth in emergency department volume annually.”
Emergency rooms are being used more these days for unscheduled, non-emergency care, many times by patients who do not have an ability to pay, because emergency rooms cannot turn away patients who can’t pay.
“Seventy-five percent of patients in the emergency department are sent home, and only 10 percent need to be there,” Michael Gutman said. “Ninety percent of patients can be treated outside the hospital environment in a much more pleasant, efficient manner. We can do the vast majority of the work the emergency department does in their neighborhood, close to home.”
The Gutman’s urgent care centers can do x-rays in house, give intravenous fluids and antibiotics, and treat other non-life threatening conditions. They also have an in-house pharmacy so patients can pick up their prescriptions on the spot. They also stock medical equipment, such as crutches and walking boots. Many urgent care centers need to refer patients with broken bones to the hospital.
“I’m slowly educating my primary care colleagues,” Michael Gutman said. “We’re not in the business to be primary care; we’re trying to fill that gap when the primary care office is closed or their schedule is full. They don’t need to go to the emergency room.”
Dr. Tom Brunell, attending physician at St. Francis Hospital, said Michael and Yahel Gutman are providing an important service.
“I think there’s a tremendous need for it,” Brunell said. “With the Affordable Care Act, if you have the means to pay, it certainly is a less expensive, more convenient option.”
Brunell said the Gutman’s model provides another option in an industry where resources are becoming scarce.
“We have a shortage of primary care physicians, pediatricians, psychologists and specialty consultations, and the default where everyone ends up is the emergency department,” he said.
