RightCare Clinic offers patients emergency services at better value – Grand Rapids Business Journal

A physician group that staffs emergency rooms at hospitals including Corewell Health plans to open its own Grand Rapids clinic next month offering a new model for care that it hopes could expand to additional locations.

Emergency Care Specialists P.C.s RightCare Clinic will provide a level of care above whats available at an urgent care center, yet below what hospitals provide in an emergency room for cases such as trauma injuries, strokes and heart attacks.

RightCare Clinic will include services such as medical imaging X-ray, CT, and diagnostic ultrasound diagnostic labs and cardiac monitoring that urgent care centers lack and refer patients to a hospital to access.

We know there are a lot of things in the ED that could be seen elsewhere if there was the right provider mix, the right available tests and treatment, and those sorts of things, John Throop, president of Emergency Care Specialists, told Crains Grand Rapids Business. Wereintermediating ourselves between the urgent care and the ED, providing a higher level of service without having to do the strokes and the traumas and the heart attacks and those things.

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Emergency medicine physicians will staff the new RightCare Clinic when it is scheduled to open on July 8 in a former West Michigan Cardiology P.C. location at East Beltline Avenue and Bradford Street NE, just north of I-96.

Emergency Care Specialists projects serving 3,400 patients in the first six months of operations.

Conditions the clinic will handle range from minor injuries and illnesses to evaluations for patients with chest and abdominal pain, cardiac monitoring, and intravenous infusions and medication administration. The clinic will refer patients who need a higher level of care to a hospital.

Lacking the cost structure of a hospital and the facility fees that typically accompany an emergency room visit, which is on top of the physician fee, the clinic can provide much of what patients would otherwise get at an ER and for a lower cost, exexutives at Emergency Care Specialists said.

Where we came up with this concept is in realizing that the emergency department is an expensive place of care, largely from the hospital charge and were not a big portion of that equation on the physician side of things and looking for alternatives as patients and employers and patients look for better costs for areas of care, Throop said. The difference with this is its going to be near-ED clinical services without that large facility fee associated with it. We think its a better value.

A 2023 report by prescription service provider Universal Drugstore estimated the average cost of a Michigan ER visit at $1,273. Another analysis this year by benefits company Mira Health pegs the cost at $1,393. Other studies show the cost is much higher, sometimes double, for patients who lack health insurance.

This is going to save a lot of people a lot of money, said Dr. Todd Chassee, vice president of clinical services at Emergency Care Specialists and medical director for RightCare Clinic.

The 40-year-old Emergency Care Specialists staffs emergency rooms at 13 hospitals across the state, including Corewell Health and McLaren Health Care. The group employs nearly 200 physicians and 100 advanced practitioners who treat about 500,000 patients annually. The group also contracts with Cherry Health in Grand Rapids.

RightCare will not operate as a walk-in clinic, but rather focus on same- or next-day patient referrals and appointments, although staff will still accept patients who come in without scheduling an appointment or calling ahead of time, Throop said.

He added that Emergency Care Specialists is close to finalizing agreements with Priority Health and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan to reimburse for members care.

Emergency Care Specialists also has been examining direct contracting with employers, particularly with large self-funded employers who operate their own on-site of near-site employee primary care clinics, Throop said.

If the RightCare Clinic model proves successful, Emergency Care Specialists will examine whether to open more locations in the region.

If this goes how we think it is going to go, therell be more RightCares, Throop said. Well need to see that its sustainable financially. It doesnt have to be operating with a huge margin. It needs to be sustainable and needs to be providing a quality service and doing what we envision that it was going to do in terms of access, convenience and cost.

Expanding hours beyond whats presently planned or adding additional locations will hinge on validating the model behind RightCare, Chassee said.

If we can prove the concept, then we can grow, he said.