Urgent care after dark
Plus: Parks and rec director to retire; Aldergate financial troubles mentioned in Wall Street Journal; Review of rainy Pops in the Park concert; 4 injured in uptown shooting; Ramen spot closes
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A new urgent care center is helping patients avoid the ER by staying open late; ‘Charlotte is too big for everything to stop at 7:00’
Dhruvtej Karande, 12, stands with After Hours Urgent Care Center CEO Dr. Waseem Ghannam in front of the center’s “social media wall” in Pineville. The facility stays open later than most other urgent care centers.
By Michelle Crouch
Co-published with N.C. Health News
On a Friday night in late May, a soccer ball struck 12-year-old Dhruvtej Karande in the face, driving the edge of his glasses into his eyebrow and opening up a two-inch gash.
His parents rushed to the nearest urgent care center, but it was already closed when they arrived, said his mom, Priyanka Karande. Then it was off to another urgent care in University City. It, too, was closed.
That’s when they turned to Google, searching for an urgent care center that was open late. The only one they could find was 20 miles away in southern Mecklenburg County — a new facility called After Hours Urgent Care Center in Pineville.
“It was very lucky for us,” Priyanka Karande said. “It had only been open 12 days. We could have gone to an emergency room, but it would have been costly, and we would have had to wait for a long time. This was very easy: He got three stitches, and we were done in an hour.”
Urgent care clinics offer prompt medical attention when primary care isn't available and it’s not necessary to go to an emergency room. In addition to suturing simple cuts, the centers can treat conditions such as respiratory infections, minor allergic reactions, muscle sprains, earaches and eye infections.
Yet almost all urgent care centers in Charlotte and across North Carolina close at 8 p.m. — leaving patients with no choice but the ER if they need non-emergency care in the evening.
After Hours Urgent Care Center, which opened May 10, aims to offer patients an alternative, said Waseem Ghannam, a board-certified family medicine physician and the facility’s CEO.
It operates in a 4,900-square-foot space off Pineville-Matthews Road near I-485. It’s open Monday to Saturday from 3 p.m. to 1 a.m., and Sunday 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.
“Charlotte is too big for everything to stop at 7:00,” Ghannam said, noting that centers typically stop taking new patients an hour before they close. “Things happen after 7:00 at night, and consumers need to have a choice. Not everything needs to go to the ER.”
Studies show between 13% and 27% of all emergency department visits are for non-emergency conditions that could have been treated at an urgent care.
Ghannam said he plans to open three more After Hours locations in the next year: in University City, Raleigh and Orlando, Fla.
Most urgent care centers close at 8 p.m.
North Carolina has 575 urgent care centers, triple the number it had in 2010, according to the Urgent Care Association, an industry group.
Charlotte’s largest health care systems, Atrium Health and Novant Health, each operate dozens of urgent care facilities in the region, according to their websites, but almost all close at 8 p.m.
A handful stay open until 9 p.m., and the Novant Health-GoHealth Urgent Care serving the Steele Creek area provides care until midnight.
Both systems offer virtual urgent care visits and emergency room access 24 hours a day. Atrium also operates freestanding emergency rooms that are open 24 hours.
In 2018, Atrium opened a 24-hour urgent care facility on Morehead Street near uptown, according to a press release. A WBTV news story from the same year said Atrium also operated a 24-hour facility in Indian Trail. Both facilities now close at 8 p.m.
“We discontinued offering 24/7 urgent care at bricks-and-mortar locations in April 2020, as the pandemic began to set in and we were making adaptations,” Atrium spokesman Dan Fogleman said in an email.
He added: “Based on the numbers of patients who utilized the service versus the cost to operate the clinics during the overnight hours, it was not sustainable from a cost perspective.”
A Google search turns up only two other urgent cares in the Charlotte region with extended hours, both operated by Iredell Health System: a 24-hour facility in Mooresville and one in Statesville that stays open until 11 p.m.
A way to reduce non-emergency ER visits
Alan Ayers, president of Experity Consulting and senior editor of the Journal of Urgent Care Medicine, said the vast majority of the nation’s 15,000 urgent care centers are open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. That’s in large part because it’s easier to hire health care providers to work a 12-hour shift, he said.
Ayers said there is a real need for care between 8 p.m. and midnight
“When we look at non-emergent use of the emergency room, it’s the hours between 8 and midnight that are really pretty significant,” he said. “Typically, after midnight people aren’t going to leave home unless it’s a true emergency and they really need the ER.”
A 2021 study in the journal Health Services Research found that having an open urgent care center in a ZIP code reduced the total number of emergency room visits by residents in that ZIP code by 17.2%, due largely to a drop in visits for less emergent conditions.
Dog bites and cold symptoms
Ghannam said he has averaged about 12 patients a day since opening last month, and the center has so far exceeded his financial projections. The clinic takes Medicaid and most N.C. insurance plans except for United Healthcare, he said. It also offers a self-pay option.
So far, he said the most common ailments the center has treated include respiratory illnesses like strep and Covid, lacerations, dog bites, musculoskeletal injuries and, interestingly enough, sexually transmitted diseases.
Why STDs? Ghannam explains it this way: “People don’t want that information in their Atrium or Novant medical record, so they will come here because we’re independent.”
The center doesn’t treat head injuries, pregnant patients, babies under 6 months old or patients looking for refills of pain medicines, he said.
Filling the gap
Ghannam said he had the idea for After Hours Urgent Care after his own son fell near a pool in May 2023 and needed stitches. The fall happened at 7:45 p.m., he said, and with the nearby urgent cares already closed, they had to head to the ER.
“It was very dehumanizing. We literally sat from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. in the ER to get this taken care of, and my out-of-pocket expense after insurance paid was $2,200,” said Ghannam, who at the time was taking a break from medicine after selling a telemedicine business he co-founded. “I just kept stewing on it, thinking, ‘How in the heck does a city like Charlotte have one-plus million people in the area, and we as consumers don’t have more options at night?’”
Ghannam said he began researching urgent care clinic ownership and found that most are owned either by major health systems or private equity firms.
Eventually, he said, he hired a consultant who confirmed his business idea could be successful.
“I've always succeeded in finding gaps, and I felt that this was a gap,” Ghannam said. “I like the fact that I don’t have to compete with anybody else at night except the ER, and I’m always going to beat the ER on price and speed.”
Michelle Crouch covers health care. Reach her at mcrouch@northcarolinahealthnews.org.
This article is part of a partnership between The Ledger and North Carolina Health News to produce original health care reporting focused on the Charlotte area. We make these articles available free to all. For more information, or to support this effort with a tax-free gift, click here.
➡️ Check out the Ledger/NC Health News guide on what to consider when deciding whether to go to an ER, a freestanding ER or an urgent care.
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Big change at the top for county’s Park & Rec department: director Lee Jones to retire at the end of June
Lee Jones, who has led Mecklenburg County’s Park & Recreation Department as director since 2018 and has been with the department for 20 years, will retire effective June 30.
Assistant county manager Leslie Johnson will fill in as interim director until a new permanent director is appointed, Jones confirmed to The Ledger on Friday.
The park and recreation director manages a budget of more than $70M and is responsible for overseeing parks, greenways, recreational facilities and programming. The department has a workforce of about 450 full-time employees and several hundred more seasonal employees.
Members of the nonprofit Partners for Parks honored Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation Director Lee Jones (left) for his service to the county at a meeting May 16 at Pearl Street Park. (Photo courtesy of Partners for Parks)
Jones comes from an architectural background, and during his time at the department, he was instrumental in opening several high-profile parks and facilities, including Romare Bearden Park and First Ward Park uptown and the Mecklenburg County Sportsplex in Matthews.
His salary was $222,272 as of January 2024, according to a Charlotte Observer database of county employee salaries.
When asked by The Ledger on Friday to reflect on his career, Jones responded:
I am most proud of leading the charge to create a culture of diversity, equity and inclusion within the Department where all employees are valued and motivated to provide exceptional recreational and cultural experiences for our patrons.
The development of Romare Bearden Park, First Ward Park, Quest, the Sportsplex, our greenway system and the reopening of the American Legion Memorial Stadium are some of the accomplishments that I’m most proud of. Our Regional Recreation Centers and the upcoming reopening of Historic Latta Place are also major success stories.
If you look at the evolution of the entire park system over the past 20 years, the quality of design and diversity of amenities is like night and day.
I am honored to have been the leader of these efforts and the first Park and Recreation Director of color for Mecklenburg County. I hope my efforts have placed the department in position for a seamless transition of leadership that will allow our successes to continue.
In retirement, I’m looking forward to enjoying all that life has to offer including travel, family, exercise, reading and music. I will truly miss my colleagues and my park recreation family. It has been a joy to serve Mecklenburg County. This is the best job I’ve ever had.
—CB
Aldersgate’s financial saga is called a ‘cautionary tale’ by The Wall Street Journal
The financial troubles at Aldersgate, the well-known longtime east Charlotte retirement community, made it into the national news last week, with the Wall Street Journal highlighting it as an example of how prospective residents should examine the financials of potential retirement homes.
The article, called “How to vet the financials of a continuing care retirement community,” provides no new information on Aldersgate’s plight, which The Ledger has chronicled since first disclosing the troubles in August 2023. N.C. insurance regulators have stepped in to oversee Aldersgate’s finances, after it endured a series of operating losses and was unable to issue required refunds to residents and their families and fell behind on payments to contractors, The Ledger has reported.
The Journal article, available only to its subscribers, says retirees examining continuing care retirement communities (CCRCs) like Aldersgate should ask to see financial documentation that shows the company’s financial health — such as cash on hand, operating income and unrestricted cash.
‘Cautionary tale’: The article says: “Aldersgate is a cautionary tale for anyone interested in nonprofit continuing-care retirement communities, which blend lifestyle amenities like on-site entertainment with the guarantee of lifelong care. The business model of CCRCs can be complex and hard for potential residents to divine.”
It also quotes an Aldersgate resident, Paul Johnson, who has served on the residents’ financial committee, and shows a photo of him relaxing at a table with friends while having a drink and wearing a Hawaiian lei. The article says:
Johnson, the Aldersgate resident, says he doesn’t regret buying in to the community despite its troubles. “It’s first-class,” he says, noting that through all the chaos, the front-line staff never faltered in its core mission to care for residents. Still, he wishes he had dug deeper into the underlying financial documents before committing. …
“My vetting was not enough,” says Johnson, who spent decades managing manufacturing plants for a consumer-goods company. He now recommends taking a close look at a prospective community’s mission statement to determine whether it is focused on service to residents. Johnson says he now realizes that the previous management “was not focused on the residents. It was focused on other communities at my expense. I did not understand that coming in.”
Also, if you missed Cristina Bolling’s excellent report last week on employee credit card charges at Aldersgate — including money spent on Tiffany bracelets, room service in Beverly Hills, plane tickets to Hawaii and luxury resorts for conferences — you should check it out.
—TM
Related Ledger articles:
“State scrutinizes Aldersgate’s ‘excessive’ credit card charges” (🔒, June 3)
“Inside Aldersgate’s financial woes” (🔒, Feb. 2)
“Inside Aldersgate, some residents aren’t sweating its finances” (🔒, Sept. 1, 2023)
“State says Aldersgate is potentially ‘insolvent’” (🔒, Aug. 18, 2023)
🎼Review: Rain forced the Charlotte Symphony to conclude its first Pops in the Park concert of the season early Sunday, but there were plenty of experiences to enjoy before the skies opened up
Ledger arts critic Lawrence Toppman headed to the Charlotte Symphony’s Pops in the Park season opener Sunday night, and although the “Sonidos Latinos” performance ended abruptly, he rediscovered why so many people head to SouthPark with their lawn chairs and picnic baskets every Sunday in June.
In his review for The Ledger, Toppman writes:
Classical musicians have lovingly depicted the sky and sun for centuries, so you’d think Mother Nature might have been more forgiving when the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra opened its Summer Pops season Sunday night at Symphony Park. But dark clouds gathered on schedule, rain began to plop more irritatingly, and CSO president and CEO David Fisk came onstage to confirm that lightning had been spotted within 10 miles, so we’d have to evacuate the area.
I bolted home, knowing there was a slim chance the “Sonidos Latinos” concert might resume — it never did — because I’d already had a complete experience over the previous three-plus hours. I hadn’t been to a Summer Pops concert in years, and now I knew why some people have become devotees and attend every Sunday in June.
Check out Toppman’s full review, with information if you want to go:
You might be interested in these Charlotte events
Events submitted by readers to The Ledger’s events board:
TUESDAY: Indie on Wheels presents “A Decent Home,” 5:45-8 p.m., Charlotte Mecklenburg Library — Sugar Creek. Join The Independent Picture House and Sugar Creek Library for a screening of the award-winning documentary “A Decent Home” followed by an audience discussion with YWCA Central Carolinas‘ Rebecca Stickel, LCSW and Pivot Point Transitional Housing’s Barry Shipp. Free.
TUESDAY: The Critic’s Eye film series: “Being John Malkovich” screening, 7 p.m., The Independent Picture House. Join IPH for its Critic’s Eye film series, in partnership with The Charlotte Ledger and CXN Advisory. The series will screen “Being John Malkovich” on June 11 as part of its exploration of notable films from the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s. Then stick around for a post-screening discussion with Lawrence Toppman, former Charlotte Observer film critic and lifetime member of The Southeastern Film Critics Association, moderated by Tim Whitmire, founder of CXN Advisory. $8.45.
◼️ Check out the full Ledger events board.
➡️ List your event on the Ledger events board.
In brief:
4 injured in uptown shooting: Four people were injured in a shooting near North Tryon and 10th streets uptown around 2 a.m. on Saturday, police said. (WSOC)
Six-figure pay: Nine of Charlotte’s largest public companies say in regulatory documents that their median employee pay is $100,000 or more. At the top of the list are Piedmont Lithium ($202,043), Brighthouse Financial ($153,036) and LendingTree ($128,635). (Biz Journal, subscriber-only)
BofA name to stay on stadium: Bank of America is staying tight-lipped about its naming rights deal for the Carolina Panthers’ stadium, even after last week’s renovation deal. Asked by the Charlotte Business Journal’s Eric Spanberg whether the bank’s name is staying on the stadium, BofA Charlotte market president Kieth Cockrell said, “That ain’t going away!” The bank supports the $1.4B deal that includes $650M of tourism tax money. (Biz Journal, subscriber-only)
Stadium deal discussion: The Charlotte City Council is scheduled to discuss the renovation deal for Bank of America Stadium at a meeting tonight.
Bank leader expands role: Stephen Philipson, U.S. Bank’s top Charlotte executive, was named as the bank’s head of its Wealth, Corporate, Commercial and Institutional Banking unit. (Biz Journal, subscriber-only)
Dad discounts and freebies: From free bowling to free entrance to the Carolina Raptor Center, Charlotte on the Cheap has compiled a list of Father’s Day deals. (Father’s Day is this Sunday, June 16.)
Ramen restaurant remembered: Futo Buta, a cherished South End eatery and one of North Carolina’s pioneering ramen shops, announced its permanent closure on Instagram, months after the passing of its founder. On social media, patrons were in disbelief over the closing, and one described it as a “huge loss for Charlotte.” (Team coverage: Observer, Biz Journal, WCNC, Fox 46)
Fired for blow-up doll video: A server at RH Rooftop Restaurant at Phillips Place says she was fired after posting a TikTok video of a male customer having lunch with a female blow-up doll. The video was viewed more than 2.5 million times. The customer later explained that the lunch date with the blow-up doll was punishment for losing in his fantasy football league. (Observer)
Correction
An article in Friday’s newsletter about other cities’ NFL stadium deals incorrectly described the Buffalo Bills’ stadium under construction. It is an outdoor stadium, not an indoor stadium. (Brrrr.) Our apologies.
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