Taking Urgent Care to a New Level

Doctors Express Urgent Care of West Hartford has just celebrated its first anniversary, and provides a professional and efficient option for many medical issues.

Tom Kelly, owner of a network of Doctors Express facilities in Connecticut in his West Hartford urgent care center. Photo credit: Ronni Newton

By Ronni Newton

You may need to see a doctor because you’re not feeling well, but that doesn’t mean that everything else involved with the experience needs to be negative. Doctors Express Urgent Care of West Hartford fills an important niche – actually several niches – and seeks to make your visit as pleasant and efficient as possible from the moment you walk in the door and are greeted with a smile.

“We try to hire people with Disneyland smiles and bulletproof clinical competence and compassion,” said owner Tom Kelly, who hopped off his high-level corporate executive career track to build a network of Doctors Express facilities in Connecticut.

He opened his first Doctors Express urgent care center in Danbury in 2013, and the West Hartford location opened in June 2014. Kelly recently opened a second Danbury location and hopes to eventually have five to 10 facilities. Doctors Express is part of American Family Care.

Doctors Express keeps people out of the emergency room – where those who may not have insurance or need care outside of normal office hours might otherwise go. Getting treated by a medical professional at Doctors Express is typically much faster than going to the ER. “We want people in and out in less than an hour,” Kelly said. It’s also a less expensive option.

Doctors Express takes all insurances, and they also see patients who don’t have insurance on a fee-for-service basis. About a third of the patients don’t have a primary care doctor. “The others were either going to go to the emergency department, couldn’t get in to see their regular doctor, or just otherwise would suck it up and not do anything,” Kelly said.

“We get people off the couch and into the health care system,”said Kelly. In the past year, professionals in the West Hartford location have diagnosed 20 cases of diabetes in people who had no idea they had it, he said.

Doctors Express has an onsite x-ray room, and they’re a DOTcertified facility for drug testing. Rapid strep, rapid flu, UTI, and basic blood screenings and vaccinations are some of the most common services.

They handle pediatrics, geriatrics, and everything in between. “Yesterday I had a 4-week-old patient and a 96-year-old patient back-to-back,” said PA Jeremy Allen, an emergency medicine specialist who is one of the primary providers in the West Hartford office. Allen said working for Doctors Express is very different from working in the ER. “I take a lot of ownership with my patients here,” he said.

In addition to six PAs, Doctors Express also has seven physicians split between the three locations. The West Hartford office employs a total of eight nurses, and four are on duty at all times during the 80 hours the facility is open. (8 a.m. – 8 p.m. Monday through Friday and 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. on weekends. They are open every day except for Christmas and Easter.)

Kelly gave up his corporate career to remain in Connecticut and spend more time with his wife and four children, but said his background gives him a different perspective on running a medical facility that is not only aesthetically-pleasing, but also a positive work environment for the employees.

“We wanted to open up the most beautiful medical facility in the greater Hartford area,” Kelly said, and he believes they have done that, with everything from the slate blue walls, to the artwork, to the sconces creating a soothing environment while at the same time incorporating state-of-the-art materials like non-porous synthetic floors (that look like hardwood) and steel/wood chairs in the waiting room that also minimize the spread of germs.

Kelly is also focused on the employee culture and said he wants Doctors Express to be “the favorite place people have ever worked.” All employees are carefully screened and retention is high – all contributing to a positive environment for the patients.

Doctors Express Urgent Care of West Hartford. 1030 Boulevard, West Hartford. 860-986-6440. urgentcarewesthartford.com. No appointment needed. Open Monday – Friday, 8 a.m. – 8 p.m. Saturday & Sunday, 8 a.m. – 5 p.m.

This profile also appears in the “Best of West Hartford” issue of West Hartford Magazine.