Two partners of Orthopedic Associates are opening on Nov. 1 the state’s first urgent care center specializing in orthopedic injuries, on the corner of Beretania and Keeaumoku streets.
All Access Ortho will be manned by physician assistants as well as orthopedic specialists for patients with injuries that need urgent care but whose injuries aren’t severe enough for more costly catastrophic emergency care.
"It would take a huge load off trauma centers so they’re not inundated with things that aren’t truly emergent," said orthopedic surgeon Darryl Kan, a partner in the venture with colleague Gary Blum, also an orthopedist. "A person who injures themselves biking is not going to require the same type of intensive care as someone badly injured in a high-speed motor vehicle accident. It just saves a lot of money. The cost of going to urgent care for an injury will be a fraction of what it would be at the ER."
Most joint and bone injuries would be better treated in an urgent care facility and help reduce patient visits to Oahu’s already full emergency rooms, which have been flooded with an increased number of patients since the closure of Hawaii Medical Center in Liliha and Ewa more than a year ago.
Kan, president of the Orthopedic Associates group practice at the Queen’s Medical Center, and his partners are leasing nearly 30,000 square feet of space at Hale Pawaa, a medical office building owned by Health Care Realty Trust, based in Nashville, Tenn.
The urgent care center will be on the ground floor of the building at 1401 S. Beretania St., where the group practice moved its offices last week. Also in the building will be a laboratory, pharmacy and imaging services, as well as a surgical center and training facility for surgeons mostly from Asia. The clinic will be open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. weekdays and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekends.
Kan and his partners are investing between $5 million and $10 million in the facility over five years.
Orthopedic Associates has been in business for 40 years. The group will continue to do inpatient surgeries at Queen’s and maintain an office at the Physicians Office Building 1.
Over the past 20 years, the partners envisioned building an all-encompassing orthopedic institute where patients could go for all their orthopedic services.
"This is basically our dream come to fruition," Kan said.
