By Blythe Bernhard
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
03/15/2009

A healthy neighborhood needs doctors, and now downtown St. Louis has them.

Downtown Urgent Care clinic is set to open Monday at 916 Olive Street with six exam rooms, four doctors, a lab and a digital X-ray machine.

Dr. Sonny Saggar, an emergency room physician at St. Luke's Hospital in Chesterfield, bought the space a year ago for $1.1 million. He was inspired to open the clinic after a woman with a laceration came to St. Luke's though she suffered the injury while working downtown. She said she was worried about wait times and quality of care at other hospitals.

It was the first time Saggar, who is from England and lives in Wildwood, had heard of what he calls the "segregation of service quality" in the region.

"I was oblivious to the social divide that happens in St. Louis," he said.

The more Saggar heard about young professionals and baby boomers moving into downtown lofts, he realized they needed a place to go for minor illnesses and injuries. "We have the capacity to do what an emergency room would do in a shorter amount of time," said Tiffany Lanzafame, the clinic's director of nursing.

The clinic is across the street from the Schnucks market and pharmacy under construction at Ninth and Olive streets. CVS Pharmacy operates a MinuteClinic inside the AT&T building at 909 Chestnut Street that is typically staffed by nurse practitioners on weekdays. BJC HealthCare handles work-related injuries and drug testing for business clients at a downtown location not open to the public.

Downtown boosters said they were excited to have the clinic available for its 11,000 residents.

"It's part of downtown's growing emergence as a true neighborhood," said Jim Cloar, president and CEO of the Partnership for Downtown St. Louis. "It energizes another storefront along Olive. We found that with Schnucks coming in, it's almost acting like an anchor."

About $2 million went into renovating the ground-floor medical offices in what is known as the Truman building. Brook Dubman of Carol House Furniture is a Saggar family friend and investor in the clinic.

Saggar, 41, envisions drop-ins from stressed-out professional types who typically refuse to see a doctor, business travelers who sprain an ankle or get a sore throat and young people who "don't care about health care because they're never sick."

It's not like an emergency room or free clinic where doctors are obligated to treat anyone who walks in the door, but more of a doctor's office, where they accept most insurance plans or cash payments.

The clinic will be open on weekdays and Saturdays with plans to expand to 12 hours a day, seven days a week.

One health care expert said the clinic's opening filled an important need for downtown's loft-dwellers, but shouldn't be viewed as an all-inclusive health care system.

"It's important to know urgent care is not a replacement for primary care, and you still need a doctor with a long-standing relationship with you," said Robert Fruend, CEO of the St. Louis Regional Health Commission.

Fruend added that the nonprofit ConnectCare ran an urgent care clinic at 5535 Delmar Boulevard for people with or without insurance.

"We need a good mix out there for everybody," he said. "It's important that people know there still are options for those who don't have the ability to pay."

Saggar met with doctors from Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis University hospitals and alerted ambulance services of the clinic's opening to be ready for any critically ill patients being transferred from the clinic.

Doctors at the hospitals said they didn't expect the clinic to have much impact on their patient volume because they were not serving the same people.

"It does fill a void, but it won't take care of my emergency department issues," said Dr. Laurie Byrne, SLU's chief of emergency medicine.

Saggar called the clinic "downtown's latest attraction" and said he wanted the space to reflect an urban aesthetic.

The waiting room has hardwood floors and a mural of the St. Louis skyline. Saggar hopes to eventually expand his clinic upstairs and bring in dentists, therapists or other care providers.