By Scott Morgan
Medical issues don’t always arise during your doctor’s office hours, and when cuts, breaks and household accidents occur in the evenings or on Sundays, the only option for most people seeking medical attention is the emergency room at the nearest hospital.
This was the market AfterOurs Urgent Care saw as its greatest opportunity. The Colorado-based company opened an office in Foxmoor Shopping Center two years ago with the help of Mark Magariello. Magariello, known largely as Dr. Mark, operates the Robbinsville office of AfterOurs and is the physician for the Robbinsville School District.
And no, the company name is not a misprint. The name is supposed to hold a family-like cachet. The Robbinsville practice, after all, is very much a Magiarello family operation. Magariello has three sons and a fiancée, Nina Lustik, working there. Magariello’s sons are on the medical side; Lustik is the marketing manager.
Nevertheless, AfterOurs does just what its name sounds like — it provides urgent medical care to patients between 5 p.m. and 10 p.m. on weekdays and 14 hours on Saturdays and Sundays. By urgent care, the practice means care for cuts, bruises, broken bones and other emergencies that do not warrant a trip to the emergency room itself.
AfterOurs does X-rays, minor lab work and EKGs. If a patient warrants a trip to the emergency room, the staff will call an area hospital that best fits what the patient needs, Magariello said.
Magariello says that maybe 10 percent of the patients AfterOurs sees warrant a trip to the ER. This helps hospitals by reducing the number of patients their ERs must process in a given day and allows their doctors to treat the patients they have with greater attention and less stress, he says.
The AfterOurs model also helps primary care doctors by allowing them something few people consider when they think of the doctor: down time.
“I feel sorry for the primary care doctors,” Magariello says. “They work extremely hard, 10 to 12 hours a day, and their day doesn’t end at 5. I want them to go home and have dinner with their families and not be bothered.”
The AfterOurs model also works for the patients by saving them money and time, Magariello says. Going to the emergency room with a large cut, for example, could leave you stranded in the ER waiting room for hours. ERs, after all, are not first-come-first-served establishments. If you’re not the most severe case at the moment, your moment will be waiting a while. When it comes to money, ERs will charge a lot more than AfterOurs. That severe cut, for example, might run you $1,000 in an emergency room.
“No patient will get a bill for more than $300 from us,” Magariello says.
For the same stitch-up or EKG or bone setting you would get in an ER, AfterOurs charges roughly a third. Or less.
AfterOurs takes all insurances, but has payment plans for the uninsured.
Lustik likes to emphasize that AfterOurs staff will call patients two or three days after their visits to see how things are coming along.
“It’s a very personal touch,” she says, “It’s not something you get even from your primary care doctor that you might have a relationship with for years.”
AfterOurs also helps people find primary care doctors because some patients do not have one, particularly if they’re uninsured. And for patients who do have a primary doctor, AfterOurs turns patients around to those doctors and sends the practice the results and records the next day, Magariello says.
“This has been embraced by doctors all over the area,” Magariello says. “They really like what we’re doing here.”
AfterOurs is located at 1001 Washington Blvd. in Robbinsville. For more information, call (609) 249-9000.
Magariello
