A West Hartford-based urgent-care operator is adding a new primary care facility to its mix as it looks to diversify and expand patient services.
New England Urgent Care is planning to open New England Primary Care next door to its urgent care clinic in Enfield in January, working to satisfy two markets in what amounts to one location, co-founder Dr. Michael Gutman said today.
“We feel that there’s a huge need in Enfield for that because over 50 percent of our patients claim that they don’t have primary care coverage,” said Gutman, who opened his first New England Urgent Care clinic in West Hartford in 2011 and added locations in Bristol, Enfield, Manchester and Simsbury.
The Simsbury office, however, will close at the end of business Saturday after five years. Gutman said he and his co-founder wife, Yahel, a nurse, are reallocating resources as part of the Enfield expansion. The West Hartford and Enfield offices are about the same distance away for much of Simsbury, Yahel said, adding, “sometimes you just have to re-evaluate.”
Gutman has no current plans for additional primary care offices and said the Enfield office, in the same building as the urgent care clinic at 55 Hazard Ave., will focus on providing a full spectrum of family medicine, seven days a week.
“We’re basically putting the urgent care model into primary care,” he said, and taking patients “when it suits them rather than us.”
A primary care office needs fewer resources to operate than an urgent care dealing with things like acute injuries, he said, but patients who need X-rays or an IV, for example, can get those at the neighboring urgent care. Each office will send patients to the other, he said.
The primary care office will include physician coverage, as well as family practice APRNs and take Anthem insurance, as do the urgent care clinics, Gutman said, referring to the current rate standoff between Anthem and Hartford HealthCare that has put HHC facilities out of network until a new contract is reached.
