ClearChoiceMD expanding to Tilton

Like the Belmont facility, the Tilton clinic will be staffed by emergency department physicians who are also on staff at Lakes Region General Hospital in Laconia under a separate employment contract with ClearChoiceMD, CEO Dr. Marcus Hampers said.

“Because we prefer to staff our facilities with emergency department physicians, we know when the patient actually needs to go to the emergency department and when they require that level of care,” Hampers said. “I'd like to think we have a very low unnecessary send rate to the ED.”

One of those physicians, Dr. Paul Racicot, said only about 1 percent of patients from the Belmont clinic are sent to the ER, “which is pretty low. I think a lot of it is we have very experienced ER physicians who are comfortable taking care of patients who are a little sicker.”

“We treat everything you can imagine,” Hampers said. “Colds, coughs, back pain, sore throats, diarrhea, sexually transmitted diseases, dehydration.”

They also offer lab work and X-rays, among other things.

“We do a lot of trauma care,” Racicot said. “We’ll take care of fractures with referral after. We do a lot of suturing, draining of abscesses, we treat more serious illnesses like pneumonia.”

Hampers laughed when asked if a visit to ClearChoiceMD is less expensive than a trip to the emergency room: “About 10 times less. So for example, an X-ray at ClearChoiceMD would be about $50. At the hospital it could be anywhere from $300 to $500-plus. Same goes for suturing, replacing stitches. We have the same stitches as the hospital emergency department, but just a simple laceration repair at the hospital could run $1,200 or even more, but for us it would be less than $200.

The difference, Racicot said, is that the hospital's costs factor in a much higher overhead.

At the same time, Hampers said they approached LRGH before opening in Belmont and have a close working relationship with the hospital and its staff.

“The nice thing about the relationship is all of the physicians like myself that work in the ClearChoice clinic are also ER physicians at the hospital,” Racicot said. “It worked well. It was kind of an access point for people after hours and off hours – holidays, weekends – but we had the full backing of the hospital because we knew all the specialists and the ER physicians.”

By the time the Tilton facility opens in a freestanding building the company is leasing near Hobby Lobby, it will be ClearChoiceMD's eighth such clinic in the state. Hampers said the company will probably spend between $750,000 and $1 million to get the building ready.

And once they open the doors initially employing about a dozen people, Hampers and Racicot said they're sure there will be a need, even though it's only about 10 miles from the Belmont location.

“The next convenient care clinic going west from Belmont is Lebanon,” Racicot said. “We'll see people in Belmont from Andover, some as far as Wilmot. It doesn't seem like much of a distance from the Belmont office, but I think it will serve especially people to the west. We have a lot of people from Franklin who drive over.”

Racicot said their goal is to get every patient in and out in an hour or less, and they hit that mark about 95 percent of the time, depending on the case.

“I think the biggest compliment we get is that the care was good and it was fast…We get that a lot from tourists, who are so happy they didn’t spend one day out of their week of vacation trying to find care.”