Meet Dr. Anthony Ferrara of Urgent Care at Peachtree and Urgent Care at Druid Hills

It occurred to me that I can provide better and more efficient care for minor emergencies through a unique urgent care model. I set out to build a clinic that was staffed by ER doctors, providing great patient care at a low cost. 

I opened my first clinic, North Atlanta Urgent Care, on Clairmont Road in Atlanta. The concept became very successful. 

My partners wanted to go a different direction and to sell to a big corporation. I walked away from the business knowing that it would be the end of good care at that clinic. Time has revealed that to be exactly what happened.  The business was bought by a big corporation affiliated with a hospital and they’ve doubled, even tripled the prices, while quality went down. 

I had left before the change happened, and opened up the clinic in Buckhead. We started as an evening clinic on the 7th floor of a building with no sign. We had no signage during the three years we were there, and a corporate urgent care opened up at the same time across the street. Guess what, after three years we grew to the point of needing to expand our hours and move into a larger location. We moved in 2015, across the street to our current location, where we continue to grow and build on our excellent reputation. My formula of good doctors, low cost and fast care still works. I worked many hours to get it to this point. For a while, I was working at hospital emergency rooms, in addition to working in my clinic to help pay the bills as we grew. Its been a hard road but fulfilling.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It has not been easy. The company started with no money. It was just a dream.  We rented medical rooms from Peachtree Orthopedics clinic at night. They had Xray, waiting room, and exam rooms. We brought in our own server and laptops. We opened on the 7th floor of a medical building.  There was no front signage.  The parking lot was dark. We were open only from 6p to 11 pm. The only sign was on the elevator door “Push 7th floor for Urgent Care.”  We were only found by word of mouth and internet searches. Ironically, the same month we opened, a 4 billion dollar venture capital group put millions into an urgent care that opened up essentially across the street from us with the title of the up an coming hot new Urgent Care in Atlanta. Talk about having competition. To make matters worse, partners from my previous business did all they could to sabotage us like telling insurance companies we were no longer in business, causing cancellations of insurance contracts. In this scenario, we opened, and with hard work, great care, great doctors, great service, low prices, honest and caring people we thrived and grew. 

I continued to work hospital emergency rooms to help pay the bills and keep the business afloat until it was viable on its own. It was not like you build it and they come.  It takes years to get to that point. We grew to the point that we had to expand the hours and open all day to 11 pm. We also needed new and better space and moved into our present location on the ground floor of a shopping center across the street. 

We continued to grow there until we felt comfortable enough to open up a second clinic in the Druid Hills section of Atlanta. We found a medical office and rented a few rooms and placed Xray in the facility. It has been the same hard beginning there since the hospital affiliated billion dollar venture capital urgent care clinic changed their online appearance to match ours and threw all of their marketing efforts into making sure we never got off the ground. I am proud to say we are still standing and growing a year later. 

The challenges never end though.  After one year at our current North Druid Hills location, leasing space in a Dekalb Medical office, another large corporation, Emory Healthcare, bought out Dekalb Medical and promptly asked us to move out due to competition with their affiliated Private equity-owned multiple sites Urgent Care conglomerate.  

But we persevere and keep moving forward.  Stay tuned for news on our next move for Urgent Care at Druid Hills!  

Please tell us about Urgent Care at Peachtree and Urgent Care at Druid Hills.
We are an urgent care owned by local doctors. We are mostly emergency medicine physicians. We are part of the community we serve. What sets us apart is that patients will see a physician only. We use no nurse practitioners or physician assistants. We use a flat fee model for payment. The average cost is about $130 all included for insured patients. Cash patients have similar costs. This means with Insurance x, if you have pink eye it’s $130. Next time you have a broken bone, and you get an x-ray and splint, it is still $130. If you come in next time for a sore throat and get a strep test and treatment it is still $130. Same for lacerations and IV fluids. NO hidden costs. We make a lot of effort to avoid waits and reduce patient time in our clinic. Customer service is paramount. Our competition starts at close to double our cost and goes higher depending on what is done and the patient does not always see a doctor. 

We are proud to be active members of our communities, sponsoring and providing first aid for many events and school activities in the areas surrounding our clinics and throughout Atlanta.  

We are the only doctor-owned urgent care in Atlanta.  Our patients see local doctors only. We use no nurse practitioners or physician assistants. We are half the price of our competition who tend to use non-physicians. So, we give our patients better care at a good value which has paved the way for our success.

I am also proud to share that our doctors are the team doctors for Georgia State University Athletics and the Georgia Swarm Professional Indoor Lacrosse team here in Atlanta. We are the medical team for the BB&T Atlanta Tennis Open.  We are skilled to take care of athletes of all ages, from small children to professionals. Many parents bring their child athletes to us because they know they can trust our experience.

We are also very proud of the high ratings we get on social media.

Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
I had many childhood memories that were good. Not one event in particular. I grew up in Italy with good parents and lots of family around.