100,000 and counting for EmUrgent Care

EmUrgentCare recently treated its 100,000th patient, a substantial milestone when you consider that the facility has  been open for just six years.

When EmUrgentCare opened in 2003, the moment was unique in Greene County history. Columbia-Greene Memorial Hospital in Catskill had just closed its doors for good and, through a series of legislative resolutions and negotiations by a group of local physicians, became what is now Greene Medical Arts Center. Apart from this, the county was largely bereft of health care. People with urgent health care needs were forced to travel to hospitals in Hudson, Kingston and Albany to get medical attention. In the years since, at various times, Greene County has been designated by New York State as a region with a critical shortage of health care providers.

Into this void stepped EmUrgentCare which, in a move that many thought would bring the facility to a quick end, provided medical care every day of the year including holidays between the hours of 10 a.m. and 10 p.m. Appointments were not needed; all patients had to do was walk through the door to get treatment.

To everyone’s surprise — with the exception of owners Dr. Stephen Hassett and his wife Pamela Hassett, who serves as the company’s CEO — EmUrgentCare thrived, gaining a regional clientele and recruiting new physicians to maintain the 12-hour-a-day, year-round schedule.

EmUrgent Care has come a long way since it began on a rather modest scale in 2003 in the old antique store at the corner of Route 9W and Route 81 in Coxsackie. More than 35,000 patients — equivalent to nearly the entire population of Greene County — are registered in its database. The Hassetts are role models for the young entrepreneurs of the area, the community openly and generously supports and trusts its medical center and EmUrgentCare stands as a local rock of Gibraltar against the persistent fluctuations of health care.