Concentra buys Dr. Gil?s Immediate Care

Dr. Gil's Immediate Care no longer belongs to Dr. Gil, but the doctor is in.

Dr. Gil Mobley, founder of the occupational health and ur-gent care center at 3000 E. Division, sold his business to a giant in the workers' compensation industry effective Nov. 9 for a price "well into seven figures," Mobley said.

The buyer is Concentra Med-ical Centers, a wholly owned subsidiary of Concentra Oper-ating Corporation, a company with 229 occupational health centers in 70 markets in 32 states.

"They expect soon to do 10 percent of the entire nation's workers' comp; right now they're at 7 percent of the entire nation's workers' comp. They're that significant a player," Mobley said.

Mobley, who is staying with the clinic as a salaried employee, said he looks at the deal as more of a merger than a purchase, because the people and the services they provide will essentially remain the same. The purchase does not include the Dr. Gil's location in Repub-lic.

Since starting Dr. Gil's Im-mediate Care in Springfield 5 1/2 years ago, "We've been just wildly successful, and Concen-tra can take us to the next level," Mobley said. One of the benefits Concentra brings is technology, "such as software to allow tracking of outcomes where we can prove that we're getting people back to work faster at a lower cost than other pro-viders," as well as "handheld computers for charting."

That new technology will likely be implemented at the first of the year, Mobley said.

Changes

Personnel is an important factor in the success of the clinic. "Nobody wants the sheet rock and the X-ray equipment; they want the people and the job we do," Mobley said.

While Dr. Gil's will retain approximately 90 percent of its 30-plus staff members, "we will lose one or two employees, and those are the ladies who wrote the checks, the accounts payable, mostly because that's done out of Dallas," he said.

The employees who are let go will receive severance packages.

Mobley continues as medical director of the clinic; charge nurse Ginny Baker will become clinic administrator; and clinic administrator Todd Lutes will return to his original position in marketing.

Changes

There will be changes to the clinic space. The name and signage will change to Concentra. Also, one of the five bays that the clinic leases for its operations now devoted to accounting functions will be devoted to physical therapy.

Because Missouri law prohibits physicians from owning physical therapy clinics, Mobley was not able to offer that service in-house; however, he was able to bring physical therapy on-site by leasing clinic space to Hands On Physical Ther-apy.

The expansion of physical therapy space will allow more services. Pre-viously, the on-site therapy was limited to forearms and shoulders. Now, "We're going to be expanding that to do backs and spines and knees," Mobley said. Patients will be able to start prescribed therapy immediately, and Mobley will have immediate feedback on how patients respond to specific treatment.

Why Concentra?

Before he started Dr. Gil's Immediate Care, Mobley said, he flew around the United States to get a feel for how occupational health clinics operated. Speci-fically, he went to Houston and Dallas to see what OccuSystem now Concentra was doing because, he said, he'd always heard they were the best.

"From the onset, 5 1/2 years ago, I had envisioned building my center up and eventually selling it to these folks, and sure enough they came knocking about three years ago," Mobley said.

It was a delicate issue, "because this company is pretty darn aggressive and they want more and more of the workers' comp market, and my biggest fear was that they were going to come in and compete against me."

In those days, "Our M.O. was to tell them We're big, we're bad, stay the stink out of town. Our competition comes in and they fold,' and we'd give them examples."

But this year, the time was right for a deal.

Why now?

Mobley said he wants to work for another five years before he slows down toward retirement. "I'm thinking, when is my practice the most valuable? Well, it's the most valuable ... when I can stick around and tell them that I'll continue to be medical director, I'll continue to promote it, I'll continue to be responsible for financial profitability and continue to do the image. They need that for the pro forma to work; they don't want to have to recruit anybody to replace me."

And Dr. Gil's was a good match for Concentra.

"Everything in our model nicely aligns with their model ... as far as the platinum people with the degrees that they require for certain positions, their patient-tech ratio, their cross-training of all their employees, you know where one person can do drug screens, but they also know the X-rays; they can also sign in and sign out patients, they can also dispense the drugs after I prescribe them," Mobley said.

Dr. Gil's business

Dr. Gil's Immediate Care primarily focuses on occupational health services, from treatment of on-the-job injuries to pre-employment physicals and drug and alcohol testing.

About 70 percent of the clinic's business is workers' compensation, and drug testing accounts for about 30 percent of revenues, Mobley said.

"Drug testing is a huge part of our business, and it's just grown and grown," he said.

Another thing that has grown over time is methods of payment. When he started the clinic, Mobley wanted to avoid the problem that had driven emergency room expenses through the roof failure to pay and subsequent cost shifting so initially he accepted payment by cash, check, charge or workers' compensation only.

Focus

Also, he didn't want to lose his focus. "The main thing is to deliver our workers' comp, and I didn't want to get too busy accepting everything and drop the ball when it came to what we were really there to deliver," he said.

When the clinic was ready, he expanded payment to include Cox-affiliated health plans, "and that's worked out very well."

As far as he knows, he added, the payer mix will remain the same; however, that is now up to Concentra.