Aurora to bring urgent care and competition to Oconomowoc

Waukesha Freeman, September 30, 2006

By ERIK BROOKS
Freeman Staff

OCONOMOWOC Aurora Health Care will bring urgent care services to Wilkinson Medical Clinic for the first time starting Oct. 30, an official with the hospital system said Friday.

The decision represents the latest in a series of announcements about increased medical services Aurora is bringing to western Waukesha County in advance of the opening of its new Pabst Farms hospital in the town of Summit.

The effort is also expected to step up the competition with rival ProHealth Care, which operates a 24- hour urgent care clinic from its emergency department at Oconomowoc Memorial Hospital, only blocks away from the Wilkinson clinic.

We have been wanting to do this for a long time, said Scott Baker, site administrator for the Wilkinson clinic. We think this is something our patients ... as well as residents of western Waukesha County need and want. Its an area we think we havent been providing as good of coverage in to date.

Baker said the addition of urgent care which provides a level of medical treatment above primary care physicians and below emergency room care will absolutely help Aurora better compete with ProHealth, which fought Auroras hospital plans for years before Aurora got the go-ahead to build with an outof-court settlement in August.

Its a potential for us to maintain the patients we currently have in our system without having to refer them Oconomowoc Memorial for urgent care services, he said.

A ProHealth spokeswoman said she expects the hospital system will lose patients with Auroras new services, be it existing Aurora patients who will now patronize the Aurora urgent care center or ProHealth Care patients who might switch.

If two grocery stores open up across the street from each other, usually the customers use both, spokeswoman Clare OSheel said.

She declined to say if the increased competition would be a negative, however.

We have been planning for the community for more than 90 years, 50 years out in Oconomowoc, OSheel said. We will just continue to do the good planning, and good planning means keeping your eye on the ball and not reacting to things that may not be necessary.

The urgent care plans follow two other announcements this year regarding expanded Aurora services in western Waukesha County.

Aurora has previously said it would open two new facilities in the Summit Centre Marketplace located on Summit Avenue near OMH: a 14,100 square-foot womens care center and 3,224 square-foot cancer care center.

Both will shift to the new hospital and medical office building planned for the area southeast of Interstate 94 and Highway 67 once it opens in 2008 or 2009. The new urgent care services likely will also move from the Wilkinson Clinic to the hospital, Baker said.

For now, the urgent care clinic will occupy about 2,500 square feet and house the equivalent of 2 1/2 full-time physicians along with staff once it is fully operational by February, Baker said. Aurora will contract with an independent physician group to run the clinic the same group that provides doctors to the emergency room at the Aurora Sinai Medical Center in downtown Milwaukee and Auroras other local urgent care sites.

The physicians will initially see patients from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday and 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Baker said. Weekday hours will be extended to 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. likely starting in February.

Baker said he expects doctors initially will see about 15 to 20 urgent care patients daily.

A target audience for the clinic will be working adults who cannot get to the doctor during normal business hours, he said.

Aurora also has begun expanding the hours of some of its primary care and specialty physicians at the Wilkinson Clinic with some seeing patients as early as 6:30 a.m. and others staying to around 7 p.m. to attract more of those patients, Baker said.