ZoomCare™ in the News

ZoomCare™ expands extended-hour neighborhood health clinic chain July 2, 2010

ZoomCare™ Passport in MDNews

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Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - BusinessWeek

Service Innovation

ZoomCare™ is a four-year-old, Portland (Ore.)-based company that promises to provide affordable health care to both the insured and uninsured.

At ZoomCare.com, transparency is key. A patient can book an appointment for the same day, view estimated wait times for walk-in visits, and examine personal records, among other things. An office visit is $89, a flu shot $28, a strep throat test $10. A recent article in the Portland Business Journal estimated that the low rates and the ability for patients to know what their bill would be ahead of time may account for the fact that 33% of ZoomCare's business comes from uninsured patients. ZoomCare™ has also received support from insurers such as Regence BlueCross BlueShield, even though ZoomCare™ often charges insured patients more to use the service.

The Portland Business Journal attributed the insurance companies' adoption of the clinic to ZoomCare™'s innovative systems, which include comprehensive doctor evaluations. Doctors are measured by company management on criteria such as completeness of notes, logic of diagnosis, and patient feedback, rather than being rewarded for the use of additional procedures and tests, a habit prevalent throughout the rest of the industry.

A local Oregon service, the business now has four state-of-the-art neighborhood clinics, with a goal of expanding so that a clinic is never more than 10 minutes away. It's proving its model, too: The company became profitable in its second year.

As we can see, resourcefulness is a key lens for creating next-generation health care that supports a patient's long-term health and creates true value: lower costs, improved results, and increased accessibility. We should take a cue from these industry leaders to rigorously rethink new outcomes.

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ZoomCare™ in the Portland Business Journal

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ZoomCare™ in the Valley Times

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Portland Business Journal - Friday, July 10, 2009

ZoomCare™ comes to Hillsboro

Portland-based ZoomCare™ on Friday opens its fourth clinic in the metro area, in Hillsboro's Tanasbourne Town Center.

The company's neighborhood clinics, also in Bridgeport Village, the Pearl District and southeast Portland, offer what the company calls "health care on demand."

Patients can schedule a same-day appointment, using ZoomCare™'s Web-based scheduling system. The company's digital interface also includes details about procedure costs, and allows patients to access their personal medical records from home.

ZoomCare™'s clinics, which accept most insurance plans, have labs and pharmacies on site. All are open seven days a week, with only three holidays each year.

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Tuesday, July 21, 2009 - The Hillsboro Argus

ZoomCare™ opens on-demand clinic

A new state-of-the-art medical clinic has opened in Tanasbourne. ZoomCare™, at 2711 NW Town Center Drive, Suite 2, offers a unique service model. Patients can schedule appointments for same-day service at the clinic's Web site, www.zoomcare.com, and make use of an onsite laboratory and pharmacy. The Web site also allows patients to access their medical chart and view a schedule of prices for common procedures.

ZoomCare™ accepts most insurance plans and offers discounts to same-day, self-pay patients. The clinic is open daily, 362 days a year.

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PBJ - by Robin J. Moody Business, Friday, January 4, 2008

Clinics advise their patients to lose the wait

The expansion of a local primary care clinic that offers same-day appointments underscores a growing trend in health care -- better serving patients with urgent health care needs.

ZoomCare™ opened its second location in Portland's Pearl District Jan. 2. The two-year-old practice is open 362 days a year, offers evening hours, and caters to walk-in patients and those who want to be seen the same day they call for an appointment.

Patients can look up estimated walk-in wait times online, and more than 70 percent of patients who schedule appointments ahead of time do so via ZoomCare™'s Web site.

ZoomCare™ is just one of a handful of pioneering medical practices in Portland going to open access scheduling that allows patients to be seen the same day they call in for an appointment.

Others include Family Physicians Group in Vancouver, Wash., and Portland's Greenfield Health, where patients get 80 percent of their care via e-mail and telephone consultations, and pay between $295 and $495 in set annual fees for care.

ZoomCare™ was founded by serial entrepreneurs Dr. David Sanders and Dr. Albert DiPiero, who previously co-founded the health care technology company MyHealthBank and the Web-based dermatology products purveyor Salu.

The practice was profitable in 2007, and is growing its patient volume by 20 percent per quarter.

"People want care when they're ready to be seen. We took that to heart and built our model around health care on demand," said DiPiero.

National study underway
The American Academy of Family Physicians in 2006 launched an initiative called TransforMED to study open access scheduling, and about 500 practices signed up to take part. The project, which wraps up in summer 2008, aims to learn whether patients and providers are more satisfied under the model, and to identify strategies that make the model work financially.

Much is riding on primary care providers' ability to bolster patient volumes and income. Primary care physicians' real income declined 10.2 percent between 1995 and 2003, according to a 2006 study by the Center for Studying Health System Change. Wages for other professionals increased by 7 percent during the same time period.

Without boosting income, clinics will s truggle to keep up with market demands, like implementing electronic medical records and footing the new administrative costs associated with the pay-for-performance reimbursement models gaining popularity nationwide.

Luring commercially-insured families to medical practices through convenience factors like same-day scheduling is key to meeting financial goals. However, clinics that make the move to open scheduling from traditional model will typically face resistance from providers, among other challenges. The model works best, experts said, at already-busy medical practices.

Yet several reviews of open access scheduling show that it creates openings for new patients, who represent new income for medical practices. Better supply-demand planning can also allow a clinic to take on more medical visits without hiring new providers.

The model has also boosted patient volumes at some clinics.

Local clinics adopt model
Dr. David Hays helped Family Physicians Group in Vancouver, Wash., make the transition to open scheduling three years ago. Under the revised model, about one-third of each provider's schedule was left open for same-day appointments. Providers were initially anxious with open periods in their schedule, which meant lost income.

"Physicians like to have control over the schedule," said Hays, now a provider at Greenfield Health. "You relinquish that if you go to open access, and you have to accept that some days will be very busy and others will be very slow."

The 27-year-old Children's Community Health Clinic in Northeast Portland is in the middle of the transition to open scheduling.

Executive Director Mardica Hicks said the safety net clinic identified patient hardships under the previous scheduling model, and decided to take the plunge.

"Many of our families simply can't afford to take a day off from work for a medical appointment. This works for them" Hicks said.

She said the clinic is looking at changing its staffing structure to address peaks and valleys in patient volume. Hicks also advised clinic leaders to collaborate early with providers to build buy-in for scheduling changes.

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Portland Business Journal - Monday, October 29, 2007

ZoomCare™ opens second location

A unique primary care medical practice, ZoomCare™, is opening its second location in Portland's Pearl District.

ZoomCare™ is a paperless clinic that offers online scheduling, same-day visits, welcomes walk-in patients and is open for extended hours and on weekends. It opened its doors in 2006 in a rather unconventional location: the Bridgeport Village shopping center.

The new clinic will be located in the Wieden & Kennedy Building on the corner of Northwest Davis Street and 13th Avenue.

ZoomCare™ is the third business venture for local entrepreneurs Dr. David Sanders and Dr. Albert DiPiero, who previously co-founded and sold MyHealth Bank, which built technology systems to support consumer-directed health care, and the 130-employee dermatological products company Salu, which operates Skinstore.com. MyHealth Bank is now owned by the software giant Trizetto.

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Best of Portland Picks

Zoom...it's the one word that best describes our chaotic life. We're always zooming in and out and all around. We enter a room looking disheveled, as we are often late and always in a rush, due to jam-packing much too much into our short little day. But we can't help it. C'est la vie...it is our life.

Even down to our healthcare, sometimes we just want to get it done. Especially when it's something as simple as our son's reoccurring ear infection. We want to just walk in, see the doctor, zoom, and be done with it...like going to the supermarket. And now we can. ZoomCare™ just opened at Bridgeport Village. It's genius. We can go to the mall, buy those shoes, get the kids a haircut, and have the doctor take a look at that boo boo...just like that.

And ZoomCare™ is a lovely, state-of-the-art facility. They have easy walk-in convenience and really excellent care, plus an on-site pharmacy. And they are open seven days a week. Check them out online at www.ZoomCare.com or pay them a visit at Bridgeport Village above The Container Store.