Open Source: Who bought Knox Community Hospital’s urgent care?

MOUNT VERNON — A Knox Pages reader recently asked through our Open Source forum who bought Knox Community Hospital’s urgent care center on Coshocton Avenue.

The answer is: No one.

However, effective Jan. 5, KCH partnered with QuickMed Urgent Care to manage day-to-day operations.

“This is truly a partnership, even more so a management services agreement with this company,” KCH Chief Operating Officer Cindy Russo said.

QuickMed Urgent Care is a clinician-owned urgent care company operating primarily in northeast Ohio. The company also has experience in occupational health.

KCH offers urgent care and occupational health services (Mid-Ohio Corporate Care) at 1490 Coshocton Ave.

The staff operate as two entities. However, Russo noted that the two operations really function together.

Russo said feedback suggested KCH was not fully meeting employers’ expectations regarding the time frame for returning employees to work.

“On the occupational health side, there are truly some nuances to that business that you need that experience in,” she said.

“So as we thought about that, bringing in a company that had that experience that could help us … getting somebody in that could have that very specific expertise would really just take the business that we were doing well and enhance it by having somebody with that experience.”

Russo said KCH considered other companies before selecting QuickMed. However, some wanted a joint venture relationship. Others wanted to brand the services as their own.

The hospital did not want either option.

“We wanted to keep that business ours. … We wanted this to be somewhat seamless to the community because again, it’s been such a great service,” Russo said.

“It’s all one team. That really was the model we wanted to have within the urgent care and occupational health.”

‘No one of us is as good as all of us’

Partnering with an outside entity to provide day-to-day management is nothing new for the hospital.

Chief Executive Officer Bruce White said one of the hospital’s strategies is the philosophy that “no one of us is as good as all of us, so we don’t try to do everything that the community needs.”

“We’ve always known that when we partner, we’re better because we can get skill sets, experience, bandwidth and things that we as an individual community hospital are not going to be able to bring to the table to the degree and extent that we would like.”

Bruce White, CEO Knox Community Hospital

For example, KCH has partnered with Ovation Healthcare, formerly Quorum Healthcare, for management services for more than 45 years.

Similarly, KCH partners with SCP Health for emergency room physicians and Vituity for inpatient specialists. Other partnerships include Healogics for the wound care center and PMG for pain management services.

White believes that one reason the hospital has been successful is that these outside partnerships bring expertise that a typical rural hospital cannot provide on its own.

However, he emphasized that these partnerships are under the KCH brand.

“We’re responsible for that brand and the services that are provided there. We negotiate and manage the partnerships that we have,” he said.

White said one of the key benefits of keeping services under the hospital’s brand, control, and billing is that it eliminates, or at least minimizes, service interruptions.

“It’s going to be a Knox Community Hospital bill. It’s going to be the network provider,” he said.

The hours will remain 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday, and 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.

Staffing changes

White said KCH has arrangements with more than 200 employers for occupational health services.

“We want to make sure that continues on the way it always has been, but we want it to get better,” he said.

However, he noted it is difficult to find and retain someone with the “rather rare skill set” as medical director of corporate care.

KCH recruiting efforts were unsuccessful, so the hospital used interim directors, which are expensive and hard to find. Consequently, the individual was only present twice a week.

“Twice a week really wasn’t serving the [employers’] needs,” White said. “Partnering with a company that does this as their main service, and with the synergies between urgent care and corporate care, makes perfect sense.”

Staff members will become employees of QuickMed. Russo said QuickMed offers the orientation, training, and updates needed for urgent care and specialized corporate care.

Additionally, because of QuickMed’s size, it can minimize service interruptions by pulling from another site if a vacancy arises or a local staff member goes on extended leave.

Russo said the two specialties average around 90 patients a day, with about 65 on the urgent care side. With the staff trained to move seamlessly between the two specialties, Russo said there will likely be a reduction in staff.

QuickMed is talking with current staff members.

“We know that we have some open positions within the hospital,” Russo said. “For those that either don’t choose to be employed by QuickMed or there’s not an opportunity for them within QuickMed, we’ll have discussions with those staff members about whether or not there would be a fit for them within an open position within the hospital.”