PA owned urgent care

[UCPA]

Hi I'm new to the forums. I have searched but could not find any post regarding the possibility of starting an urgent care.

 

I found a physician who is willing to supervise, however, he is an Orthopaedic surgeon. I recently had a conversation with another PA who told me that in order to open an Urgent Care the SP must be a FM or IM physician. Is this True?

 

Is there any PA on this forum that owns an urgent care that I can get advice from.

 

BTW I live in orange county CA. Thank you for your help!

[marilynpac]

We have a section on PA owned practice but it's a new section. You might want to PM jmj11 after reading his thread in that section..

[EMEDPA]

any physician could be the sp.

I know pa's who run uc's with er doc supervisors, family doc, etc

IM would actually be a poor choice as internists can't see kids, ob, and have very little trauma exposure and those things make up a big chunk of any uc volume.

[jmj11]

It comes back to the literal law and the spirit of the law. The spirit of the law is that a PA should not work outside the scope of practice of their SP. Many of us have pushed that envelop in one way or the other. I know that while my SP is family practice and he is my SP in a headache practice, we were able to demonstrate that he is a headache specialist. But proving that was a real challenge. I was helped by the fact that he has been a member of the American and International Headache Societies for the last ten years and had his own headache clinic. If that had not been true, if he was just a typical FP physician, I'm quite sure that the Medical Quality Assurance Committee would not allowed him to be my SP and no malpractice insurer would have touched me.

 

So, the SP of an Urgent Care PA should be the same type of physician who would work in an urgent care themselves. I've never seen an orthopedist working in urgent care . . . maybe someone has. If you can prove that an orthopedist can and does work in urgent care, you might win your case. A FM physician could and certainly an ER physician would make a lot of sense. Other specialists would be hard to prove that you are not working outside their scope. So, you might be able to pull it off under the literal law . . . but it would be walking a thin line and could make the business vulnerable. One example (which I had to struggle against) is malpractice insurance companies. They may not insure you with an orthopedic SP. In their eyes, we PAs are being constantly guided by the direction of our SP, so if the SP doesn't know how to remove a fish-hook from the face of a child then the PA wouldn't either . . . so they assume.

[EMEDPA]

I quit my last job because my personal scope of practice exceeded that of the(FP) doc they wanted to stuck me with when my regular(ER) sp left the group.

[UCPA]

Thank you all for your informative input. In doing more research about urgent care, I came across an urgent care in So cal that is owned by a PA. I believe the SP is an orthopedist.

[EMEDPA]

as a new grad I was offered a job at an inner city (L.A.) UC owned and operated by an off site pathologist.