Urgent Care Heroes: The Stories Behind the Limelight Award Winners
March 02, 2023
Experity created the Limelight Awards to honor forward-thinking urgent care heroes for their contributions to their staff, patients, clinics, communities, and/or the industry as a whole. Nominees do not need to be Experity customers to be eligible, and since its inception in 2022, the response has been tremendous.
The categories for 2022 were:
We sat down with the winners to get more insight into what they do and how they do it. Let’s get to know the exceptional individuals who took home these awards at Urgent Care Connect this year.
Dr. Cardillo is a founding partner of Mend Urgent Care, which was established in 2015. When it comes to his role, he describes himself as a jack of all trades, ensuring (along with his partner) that everything runs smoothly and their operations are strong. The business has three brick and mortar locations and multiple offsite locations that they’ve expanded into over the last three years.
Cardillo’s nomination praised him for pivoting quickly and taking risks by purchasing several vehicles for staff to travel to patients and off-site testing locations, making them able to provide care to all patients regardless of their ability to pay for care.
“I’d have to say yes. It’s not often in medicine that we get honored and receive awards. I think the expectation is we’re just always operating at a very high level, and we tend not to give each other awards in the house of medicine. So I was certainly surprised when there was a nomination for this type of award. I’m very humbled and grateful that I was nominated.”
“Well, I’ve certainly seen the necessity for organizations to pivot very quickly and not be hindered by a lot of operational weight. I think a critical thing that my partners and I were very adept at was really knowing where things were headed and moving the team into that direction together. And also being very supportive and sensitive to what was going on in our community over the last three years.”
“Well, I would certainly say that we are grateful to be in the position that we’re in. We provide such amazing care to the community and what we saw happen during COVID was how fractionated our healthcare system really is. And we saw all of the urgent cares throughout America coming together to really provide the necessary care to the community. I would advise all the urgent care operators to continue doing that, to continue being a force in our community that people can turn to when they need care. Also, learn how to move very quickly to address those needs. We don’t know what’s next. We don’t know what’s around the corner. We don’t know what we’re going to experience a year from now or further. So you have to always be prepared to pivot as quickly as possible to meet the needs of your community.”
“Collaborating with all of the wonderful professionals that are here, both on the medical side and the operational side, learning a lot about what’s going on, and also sharing information. Remember, in healthcare, there really never should be proprietary information. We all need to be sharing what we’ve learned to help treat the patients the best we can.”
A psych nurse practitioner by trade, Nikita Duke’s role is to continue to grow a behavioral health program which includes building a call center and a team of therapists — like nurses and nurse practitioners— who are available to provide behavioral healthcare in rural communities. This urgent care has over 240 locations across six states in the southeast U.S.
Duke’s nomination touted her for being instrumental in leading the launch of behavioral health and telehealth at Fast Pace. She has grown the team from a single provider to more than 30.
“Yes, I honestly was shocked. It was a thrill. I’m very fortunate for the wonderful staff and leadership team who thought highly enough of me to nominate me for the award.”
“As we continue to grow and as we become a larger program, one thing for me is I don’t want to lose that feel of a very close-knit, tight team with good communication. I want to continue to grow that as we expand and make sure that my team feels supported. As we do new acquisitions and we continue to grow to more clinics, I also want to establish great communication and relationships with those clinics. Figuring out how to do that is another challenge. We have tried to change some of our strategies and find ways to improve that so that no one loses that tightknit, small feeling while also providing quality care and a service that patients can trust.”
“I really hope that Fast Pace continues to grow our locations in the states we are in, or even go beyond that to more states, whether it’s acquisitions or building from scratch. I hope that behavioral health is offered in every location and state that Fast Pace offers services, and maybe even beyond. We’ve already stepped out beyond Fast Pace with a university agreement. And I would love to continue to expand on that. With what we do, being able to offer telehealth services, we can go beyond that brick and mortar. And I would love to really honestly make a huge impact as a company, as a program, in our rural communities.”
“One of the things that I enjoyed most about the conference this week is getting to meet people, making new connections. There are people whose names I’ve seen before, but never got to put a face with a name. So that’s been a pleasure to meet everybody. Also the location has been gorgeous — beautiful location, great atmosphere.”
We were unable to speak with Le directly and would like to share a few excerpts from her nomination.
Cammie has been with Owl Now for 13 years and is described as being instrumental in every decision the clinic makes, including choosing a new EMR and implementing the resulting workflow changes that had a tremendous impact on the number of patients each provider could see.
The nominator specified that these workflow changes* enabled a single provider to see up to 120 patients a day.
She learned very quickly that when something doesn’t work, you must pivot and come up with a solution that does. By shifting her entire workflow to quickly see patients, it eliminated the need for patients to leave and go to another urgent care. We rarely, if ever, lost a patient due to long wait times or overcrowding as we kept the flow moving steadily throughout each shift.
I think this goes back to figuring out a way to see 100+ patients with only one provider. When you are sick or are sitting in a waiting room full of sick patients with your sick children, the thing you want most is to get good care, but also to get out of there as quickly as possible. Cammie made that possible for our patients.
She never thinks in terms of what she did. To her, it is always her team. She is an excellent boss who requires nothing short of perfection from her staff and always thinks one step ahead on how to do things better. This urgent care would not run the way it does today without her leadership or innovative thinking and use of the EMR to accomplish her goals.
*Cammie’s workflow changes were made using Experity’s EMR/PM solution
Visit our Limelight page for more information about the awards and what they mean for the winners. To stay in the loop for 2023 nominations, click the button below and sign up for updates. We will put out a call for submissions in August. If you’re an Experity customer who would like to build your brand, share expertise, and be more involved in the industry, check out our A List page.
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