The Doctors Treatment Center of Granby Opens Doors

It’s 6 p.m., you’re exhausted from a long day at work and your 6-year-old daughter has an earache.

Normally, the options would be to either endure the long slog at the emergency room or wait it out until morning and hope that you can sneak in an appointment with your primary physician.

The Doctors Treatment Center in Granby, which opened its doors Dec. 4, provides another alternative.

Dr. Stephen Kei and his wife, Barbara, opened the center, located at 7 Mill Pond Road just off Route 10, after reviewing the demographics from their other site in Plainville and noting that many of their patients hailed from area towns like Granby, Canton and Avon.

“There was nothing here with our type of facility,” Barbara Kei, the center’s operations manager, said.

Their “type” of facility offers urgent care for the ill or injured as well as occupational medicine services at a reasonable price, Barbara Kei said.

The acute issues in the Doctors Treatment Center’s wheelhouse are coughs/colds/flu, poison ivy and other skin issues and asthma (they have a nebulizer), as well as traumas such as sprains, fractures and lacerations.

“We handle single and multi-layer lacerations and we do some splinting and casting,” Dr. Stephen Kei said while providing a tour last Friday.

An X-Ray machine, an EKG and a defibrillator are also on site.

There are several benefits to have issues like the ones listed above treated at The Doctors Treatment Center, Barbara Kei said.

“There’s a faster turnaround than the emergency room and, in 99 percent of the cases, there’s a lower co-pay than the ER,” she said.

What the facility does not handle is what’s known as “longitudinal” issues — things that you would see your primary care doctor for over an over again, such as high blood pressure.

Barbara Kei said that, for lack of a better term, the center is designed to fill the gaps between what is provided by the emergency room and primary care physicians. Barbara noted that the gaps were based on heavy workload, and not on things slipping through the cracks.

On top of acute health issues, the 3,600-square-foot facility is also equipped to handle occupational medicine, such as pre-employment and random drug screenings, workers’ compensation cases and DOT physicals.

The center employs 12 people, including two doctors and one physicians’ assistant, though not all staffers work at the same time.

The facility has five examination rooms, several offices and a bright, open waiting room that comfortably seats 16 to 18 people. The 90-gallon fish tank for the waiting room is currently on order, Dr. Stephen Kei said.

So far, everything has gone well, according to Barbara Kei.

“We’ve gotten such a warm reception from the community, from local businesses to people stopping by and wishing us well,” she said. “It’s been really heartwarming.”

The center is open from 7:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays.

For more information, visit www.urgentcarecentersct.com.