Roswell Urgent Care Reopens After 10 Month Hiatus

publication date: Nov 1, 2008

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author/source: Tim Altork / STAFF

By Tim Altork / STAFF

Dr. Judith Dennis reopened Roswell Urgent Care on August 1.

The Roswell Urgent Care Center had been idle for nearly eight months, closed because of a glitch in the original owner’s business plan. Dr. Judith Dennis, who had helped run the facility in its first incarnation, had taken work in South Georgia and was commuting from her home in Mountain Park on a weekly basis.

That all ended when the owner called Dennis and asked her if she wanted to buy the facility and reopen it. She jumped at the chance.

“He knew that we all loved working here and that the clinic was a wonderful place to be,” Dennis said. “It was just really with him a matter of the fact that the business model that worked for him in Texas did not work here.”

She reassembled much of the old staff including doctors Jim Pruitt and Jill Mabley, who also showed no hesitation at the chance to reopen.

But even though it’s the same building and most of the same people who were there before the doors were closed last October, Dennis and her staff are essentially starting from scratch.

“It’s like starting a completely new business,” Dennis said. “When you’re closed for two months it’s almost like re-opening, but when you’re closed for over eight months it’s like opening a new business.”

Urgent care centers are designed to ease the patient load for emergency centers and traditional doctors’ offices. The intent is to provide a place to go for minor injuries and health care needs such as physical examinations and flu shots. At Roswell Urgent Care they provide their services with little or no wait time.

“You get much more personalized care. You get seen much more quickly. And it’s not as large of an expense,” Dennis said. “It’s somewhat more I think than if you went to see your family practitioner whenever it is they could fit you in, and it’s much less than going to get the same service at an emergency department with much less wait.”

The goal for the Roswell Urgent Care staff is to have you treated and on your way in less than an hour.

“I would say we meet our goal an overwhelming majority of the time,” Dennis said.

But while the clinic is equipped to handle everything that a hospital emergency room handles, Dennis emphasized the importance of relying on hospitals and ambulances for life-threatening injuries or conditions.

Dennis and her two colleagues are all board certified in emergency medicine and Dennis and Pruitt spend time on emergency room floors when not manning the clinic. Mabley pulls double duty as a volunteer fire chief and public safety officer in Cherokee County.

Since reopening they have also decided to go through a national certification process, something that is not currently required for their type of facility.

“It was good to be able to take a look at each of those things and make sure that we were in line with everything,” Dennis said.

They also have a comprehensive lab in which they can produce blood test results, for instance, on the spot instead of having to send them off and wait days for the information to come back.

But even with all those bells and whistles what makes the facility successful is the personal touch that comes from a locally owned and operated business. For example, if a self paying patient comes in and can’t come up with all the money right away, they’ll find more flexibility at Roswell Urgent Care because most of the time the person that’s treating them is the one that has the authority to make those kinds of decisions.

“We have the benefit of being able to do the things we need to do, but also the benefit of being locally run and locally managed and being able to make those managerial decisions so that we can make our care more flexible,” Dennis said.

Roswell Urgent Care is located at 660 W. Crossville Road, Ste. 110 in Roswell in between Moe’s and Bonehead’s. They can be reached at 770-992-4700 or at roswellurgentcare.com