Harmon Medical Center expands with facility on Charleston Boulevard
Sustained growth in the Las Vegas Valley and its attendant building boom have fed a steady increase in the number of workers compensation cases. One medical clinic plans to capitalize on this trend.
Harmon Medical Center has treated injured workers in Southern Nevada for years from its original location at 150 E. Harmon Ave. But the area’s growth has pushed the company to increase capacity in the face of escalating on-the-job injuries, an HMC official said.
Harmon Medical Center Administrator Sue McCourt said during the new facility’s June 21 opening at 2809 W. Charleston Blvd. that there has been a “pent-up need” for expansion.
The Harmon Avenue location runs around the clock as an urgent care and workers comp treatment center. The new location will supply increased capacity for the occupational medicine unit.
Asked why the clinic is expanding now, years after the building boom started, McCourt said, “I don’t think we were ready sooner.”
McCourt said the company needed to improve its business model, which included hiring more physicians well-versed in occupational medicine. The philosophy hinges on building relationships with the employers with whom the company contracts.
Not only does HMC have to look out for injured workers’ best interests and ensure their safe return to the workplace, McCourt said, the clinic has to balance the employers’ interests — their medical treatment costs are often less expensive than having employees out of work.
Dr. Jeff Marcovitch, who will oversee the new HMC facility, calls it “a tricky kind of coordination” to try to make workers comp cases into a “win” for everyone.
Marcovitch said sometimes to achieve balance, injured workers’ abilities need to be documented along with their limitations, so those workers can be temporarily reassigned. Reassignment often is viable, and it helps businesses’ bottom lines, he said.
“You want these people mobile,” he said. “Rarely do you see a person who needs to stay at home.”
Harmon Medical Center is not a full-service center. Marcovitch said that physicians treat injured workers initially if they require urgent care.
Doctors at the medical center also develop treatment and rehabilitation plans and set restrictions for injured employees’ returns to work. Procedures such as magnetic resonance imaging exams or physical therapy are outsourced, he said.
Marcovitch, who has spent a year with the company, said his new position is refreshing. He praised the clinic’s owner, Edwin Fujinaga, for having deep pockets that allow him to focus on quality of care rather than quantity of patients.
With medical procedures netting higher insurance reimbursements than consultations, doctors have had to increase their patient loads to make a decent living, Marcovitch said.
However, he added, increasing patient volume drags down the quality of care and leaves many physicians dissatisfied. It’s a major reason Marcovitch left family medicine after 17 years.
“It just — over the years, that kind of pressure wears you down,” he said.
HMC pays its physicians a salary, Marcovitch said, so “if we see two people on a shift or 50, it doesn’t make a difference.”
At the original location, he said he saw, on average, between 20 and 40 patients in a 12-hour shift — a fraction of many physicians’ workloads. Overall, the Harmon Avenue center sees about 1,500 patients per month.
But there’s another factor increasing Marcovitch’s job satisfaction — knowing his role in Las Vegas’ “thriving economy.”
He said he has treated tourists, entertainers and stage actors — people whose jobs he credits for affording him and others a good quality of life.
“To me, being involved in what keeps Las Vegas going … that’s what matters to me,” he said.
