Convenience is a growing trend in health care, and freestanding emergency rooms, urgent care facilities and convenient care clinics are opening in the Southwest Austin area to meet demand for neighborhood doctors who can provide care when it is needed most.

Construction is in progress on a few facilities that will aim to bring local residents convenient options.

OnCall Emergency Center Circle C opened in mid-June at 5701 W. Slaughter Lane. OnCall CEO Jason Styles said the 24-hour, 5,000-square-foot center has a radiology suite with CT-scan, X-ray and ultrasound equipment as well as an on-site pharmacy and lab.

“This little niche of health care is really expanding, and it’s really, I think, coming from the increased insured population due to the Affordable Care Act and just the need. The hospital ERs are getting overcrowded. … [Freestanding emergency rooms are] giving people the option to stay in their neighborhood and go down the street and get treatment and not have to go through … sitting in a hospital waiting room.”

In some cases shorter drives can make the difference between life and death, said Marysol Imler, Five Star Emergency Room vice president of operations.

Continued growth

In Southwest Austin construction is wrapping up on Five Star ER’s 8721 Manchaca Road location, which will open in September, Imler said. The 7,800-square-foot facility will feature eight examination rooms and offer X-ray, CT scanning and ultrasound services. Work is underway on a Dripping Springs location, which will open in August.

A 7,000-square-foot First Choice ER at 9312 Brodie Lane opened in May 2014, spokesperson Claire Gibson said.

“[Southwest Austin] is growing rapidly,” she said. “It seems like a lot of new families are moving in, and there was an underserved community there with a demand for emergency care.”

There are differences between ERs and urgent care facilities, she said.

On March 7, Austin-based company MedSpring Urgent Care opened a location in the space of a former CareSpot center in Southpark Meadows. It is open daily from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. at 401 W. Slaughter Lane, Vice President of Marketing Nerissa Sardi said. MedSpring opened a location at 208 W. Ben White Blvd. in 2013 and now operates 12 centers in the Austin area.

On June 1, Pennsylvania-based company Select Medical announced it had purchased urgent care company Concentra, which operates two Southwest Austin clinics at 10001 S. I-35, Ste. 300, and 4301 W. William Cannon Drive, Bldg. E, Ste. 320. Concentra spokesperson Edwin Bodensiek said in an email that no expansions or immediate changes to staffing or hours are planned.

Critics of urgent care clinics and freestanding ERs say the facilities are a high-volume enterprise with the goal of getting as many people in the door as possible, but at OnCall Emergency Center it is just the opposite, Styles said.

“We’re low-volume and high-contact. … The physician actually sits with you and talks with you about your problem,” he said. “We might see 10 patients in a day, or we might see 30.”

There is also often a misperception that freestanding ERs are more expensive than hospitals, Styles said.

“We charge just like the hospitals do, if not less, and we offer that convenience of an average treatment time of under an hour,” he said.

For problems that are not emergencies, convenient-care clinics are a growing trend. RediClinic opened a 598 W. Hwy. 290 location inside H-E-B in Dripping Springs on April 2. CEO Web Golinkin said nurse practitioners and physicians there treat strep throat and other illnesses that are not life-threatening.

“We treat about 85 percent of what gets treated in an urgent care clinic. What an urgent care can treat that we don’t treat are basically broken bones and lacerations,” he said.

Preventive care matters, Golinkin said, noting the health care system is trying to find new ways of reducing costs while still providing the best care.

“There’s clearly a trend toward what has been referred to as the ‘retailization’ of health care, and a lot of it is driven by consumers’ desire for greater accessibility and convenience to care,” he said.

Texas is spearheading efforts to bring more options to underserved residents, Imler said.

“We now have 24 states represented that are interested in putting freestanding [ERs] in their states because they are seeing that gap in their community,” Imler said.

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services do not recognize independent freestanding ERs as official emergency departments, so freestanding ERs cannot accept Medicaid or Medicare, she said. Five Star ER is part of a group that is working to change that, she said, noting there were efforts during the most recent legislative session.

Gibson said that although there is growth in the freestanding emergency room industry and First Choice ER has expanded significantly over the past few years, helping people is still the top priority—something she remembers often when the company hears from patients.

“One was a woman who came in ... to one of our facilities with a horrible stomach bug and they [treated her] with IVs and everything and then five hours later she was dancing at her wedding. … Beyond just expanding and opening new facilities, [our focus is] patient care and making sure that we are delivering the highest-quality care.”