First care: a study in treatment: clinics offer urgent-care, workers' comp services seven days a week.

• Author: Kalytiak, Tracy
• Position: HEALTH & MEDICINE

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Changing seasons usually bring buds, sun, falling leaves or snow. At First Care Medical Centers, however, shifting seasons herald the arrival of something quite different.

"Injuries are predictable with the seasons," said Ruth Sisk, First Care's chief financial officer.

Spring features pollen and allergic reactions. Summer hikers and anglers sprain ankles, fracture wrists, guzzle giardia-ridden stream water, bury barbed salmon hooks in their thumbs. In the fall, kids return to school and bring home colds, flu, stomach ailments and lice. And in winter, people break legs and bump heads on frozen sidewalks, in fender-benders on icy roads and while schussing down mountain slopes.

First Care has spent nearly 24 years treating a host of urgent-care injuries and illnesses at its clinics in Anchorage. Those clinics employ 85 and are open from 7 a.m. to midnight, 365 days a year, and they do not close for holidays or weekends.

First Care's 11 doctors and five physician assistants care for patients too sick or injured to wait several days for appointments with their family doctors, but whose conditions aren't serious enough to require a trip to the emergency room.

"They can come in at 7 in the morning before church or on a weekday after the kids are in bed," Sisk said. "We'll always open at 7 (a.m.) because we want to catch those people who had something happen in the middle of the night and want to see someone before they go to work. For that person who just sliced a hand cutting a bagel, it's important to not miss work. If there's no flexibility in that person's job, it could make a big difference."

Dr. Clifford Merchant, an emergency room physician at Providence Alaska Medical Center, opened First Care's Spenard Road clinic in July 1985, then opened a second clinic on Huffman Road the following month. A third facility, focused on occupational medicine such as workers' compensation, drug testing and pre-employment physicals, opened three years ago and is adjacent to the Spenard Road clinic.

The clinics usually treat about 100 patients a day, with numbers spiking above that during flu seasons, Sisk said. Annually, First Care facilities handle about 38,000 visits.

People who can't immediately pay the amount not covered by their insurance and who have been employed at their jobs for at least a year may make payment arrangements.

Half of First Cafe's patients do not have health insurance, Sisk said. First Care can provide a vital...