Did you break your ulna, or arm bone, on a Saturday at 7 p.m. in Battle Ground?
Call Vital Care, heads of the locally owned business said.
The business has been at its current location at 101 NW 12th Ave., Suite 107, since August, owner Todd Cichosz said. The facility was previously housed at a spot in the Battle Ground Village.
The old space wasn’t adequate for the business, Cichosz said. The new location is four times the size, and has imaging equipment for X-rays, ultrasound and electrocardiogram, among other laboratory capabilities.
Though the previous location was only open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, the new one is open all days of the week from 7 a.m. to midnight.
Cichosz said he has been able to get staff because of an employee-focused business model.
“You hire good people and they’re on their way,” Cichosz said.
He said the notion of a focus on clients isn’t something widely practiced among the health care industry.
“There’s nothing wrong with mixing medicine with customer service,” Cichosz said. “All people want to do is be heard and understood, and feel validated.”
He reiterated that focus.
“It doesn’t matter how right you are, how smart you are. If a patient doesn’t understand it or they don’t feel like you care or they don’t feel like you listened, none of it matters,” Cichosz said.
Cichosz said the overall “feel” of a place is important. He mentioned the need to set up a facility where patients don’t think about the wait times, “or they don’t care they waited,” he said.
Cichosz was a physician assistant for about a decade and felt he had reached his maximum professional growth in the job. He said the idea to start his own clinic came from a local business owner.
“Somebody had to start it, but the employees built it, and the customers built it,” Cichosz said.
Cichosz said the company currently doesn’t take many private health insurance company plans.
“More often than not, the insurance is sitting between,” Cichosz said
The company accepts insurance, which is paid by a number of local businesses, but generally the model isn’t focused on insurance support, Cichosz said. He said most people are underinsured or have a high-enough deductible that doing it directly makes the most sense.
“We don’t take your insurance, but our cash-pay rate is cheaper,” Cichosz said.
Cichosz said his business is not in the “direct pay” model that tends to involve a recurring fee for access.
“If your doctor orders an ultrasound, you can get it done at Vital Care,” Cichosz said, adding, “We can do a 7 o’clock Saturday, we can do a 10 o’clock Saturday, whatever works for them."
In some cases, not having the bureaucracy of health insurance allows for quicker results, Cichosz said. He mentioned a kid who needed a computerized tomography (CT) scan, which Vital Care can do in-house.
That scan would have been covered by the family’s insurance, but nearly a half year out, Cichosz said.
“She’s out 500 bucks, but she gets it five months sooner,” Cichosz said.
Regarding the expanded hours, Cichosz said that means the business can handle emergent situations, like bleeding during pregnancy.
“We’ve seen business all hours of the day,” Cichosz said.
The business owner said his company’s resources could avoid unnecessary issues.
“Thirty to 50% of a clinic’s cost can be related to third-party billing,” Cichosz said.
He said the idea to get away from the bureaucracy of health care began when he was still a student, more than a decade ago.
Cichosz said he has never lived in another place where the opportunities offered in Southwest Washington are available.
“I don’t think we could pull this off (elsewhere,)” Cichosz said.
Cichosz has enough of a reason to be in Battle Ground, but when it comes to food, he has a specific name.
“Keo Thai,” Cichosz said with a laugh.
