ST. GEORGE — Fracturing a bone usually means a trip to the emergency room and the expensive bill that comes with it. But doctors at St. George Regional Hospital said they are trying something different designed to get quicker care with less of a sprain on the pocketbook.

On Thursday, an orthopedic urgent care center opened at St. George Regional Hospital’s Health and Performance Center. The Intermountain Southwest Ortho Urgent Care clinic is intended to be the place where people with fractures, sprains and other orthopedic injuries go instead of the emergency room. 

“We do the extremities, would be the best way of thinking about it, so arms, legs from shoulders and hips out towards the fingers and toes,” said Dr. Ryan Eggers, an orthopedist at the hospital. “Rather than having to wait for the ER physician to call the orthopedic specialist and then maybe having to wait a week, we can see the X-ray, make the diagnosis and make a plan. We can do the booking for surgery. If it doesn’t need surgery, then we can also do that. We can do the casting. It’s all contained.”

Eggers said there will still be some orthopedic injuries that will need the greater urgency of an emergency room. 

“If you see a bone sticking out of the skin, go to the ER,” he said. “Most car accidents would be better off going to the emergency room because there could be head trauma, chest trauma, belly trauma. But if your arm’s bent funny and that’s the only thing that’s happened, we can help you here.

But in the case someone comes in with something they can’t handle, that patient won’t have to go far for help, Eggers added.

“The nice thing is we are on campus with St. George Regional Hospital,” he said. “It’s … literally right next door. If we see something that we know is out of our scope to take care of here in the clinic, then we’ll just send you to where you need to be.”

While not in the main hospital building on River Road, the new clinic is behind it on the fourth floor of the building at 652 Medical Center Drive. It’s also the first of its kind in the Intermountain Healthcare system in Utah and is expected to serve the community Mondays through Fridays from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.  

Doctors, assistants and administrators at the grand opening of the new clinic last Thursday said the idea for the clinic can be traced back to the vision of one man, Dr. Warren Butterfield. 

“He took a step back and said, ‘We don’t need to charge patients this much money to get fracture care. Let’s see if we can just open up a walk-in clinic that’s convenient to the patients when they get hurt,’” said Ryan VanderWerff, the director of musculoskeletal, neurosurgery, and spine service lines for the Intermountain system. “The vision was, ‘Let’s cut out that whole middle piece. Let’s save patients a ton of money and let’s just get them in with they need care.’”

For his part, Butterfield told St. George News since coming to what was then Dixie Regional Medical Center nearly two decades ago, having an orthopedic urgent care was less of a vision and more of a dream.

“It has been a 15-year dream,” he said. “This has been something that I’ve pushed and asked for for a long time. The vision is to provide the highest quality orthopedic care for acutely injured patients at the lowest cost possible. This allows patients to come in at a lower cost and gain access for the treatment.”

That includes many who partake in one of Southern Utah’s top assets: the great outdoors.

“We have a large population that enjoys hiking and mountain biking, motorcycles, ATV, so there’s a lot of opportunities where injuries can occur,” Butterfield said. “And when those occur, we just like to be a resource available to help.”

A 2017 study by the National Institutes of Health found the cost of going to the ER was, on average, 10 times more than going to an urgent care clinic. In the case of the new orthopedic clinic in St. George, hospital officials say the hope is it will be a better option for those with high deductible plans or no insurance at all.

The goal of those running the clinic is to also be a better option than the ER for those with orthopedic injuries. In a sense, it is aimed at being a specialized emergency option for the little league player who had a bad slide into second, the contractor who fell off a ladder or the hiker who twists his ankle in Snow Canyon. 

From the administrative standpoint, VanderWerff said the urgent care is good for both the hospital and its patients.

“We can decompress our emergency rooms and we can get patients right where they need to be,” he said. “From a patient experience, it’s extremely much more efficient. You can bypass that multi-thousand dollar bill and you can get the care you need at a lower cost. I mean, that’s a win-win.”

Ed. Note: Clinic’s hours of operations have been updated.

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