Passers by may have seen only a sign and a backhoe lately, but if all goes well, the lot at the corner of Ladson Road and Midland Parkway will soon be the home of a new state of the art urgent care medical center: Nason Medical Center.

The 10,000 square foot, $4.5 million facility will offer a full array of urgent/emergency care medical services. Currently, Nason operates four facilities in the tri-county area and employs 205 people.

Dr. Baron Nason, who started Nason Medical Center in 2005, is bringing the services of his burgeoning medical group to Summerville, says he hopes to have the new facility up and running in 4-6 months.

“It’s mostly a matter of permitting more than anything else,” Nason said. “Our medical centers are all the same design – in fact, sometimes I’m not sure which one I’m in, and that’s the way I like it.”

In other words, the facilities and the services offered are the same in each location. In this way, Nason and his staff can work in all locations without having to continually familiarize themselves with individual facilities – everything is in the same place in each clinic.

“That makes us much more efficient and better able to serve our patients in a timely fashion,” he said.

Each Nason Medical Center is a 10,000 square foot facility and offers a wide array of emergency services, from cardiac care to imaging services.

A native of Tennessee, Nason came to the Charleston area in 1997 out of residency and worked for several area hospitals as an emergency room physician. However, after several years he decided he could make much more of a difference in the community outside the constraints of a hospital and decided to go out on his own.

“All emergency rooms are competent – you’re going to get competent medical care in any emergency room in this area,” he said. “The difference is in the service. People want to be seen in a timely fashion and treated like a human being, and they don’t want to have to pay upwards of $5,000 for the visit. That’s what we do. What we don’t do is just look for certain insurance groups everyone is welcome.”

Nason said the decision of where to build a clinic is based on one thing – patient need.

 “There’s no secret to how we decide where to locate,” he said. “It’s all about demographics and patient need. We do need a certain number of people within a certain area, but we are simply looking for areas that need the service. Everyone needs urgent and emergency medical services, and everyone deserves access.”

Apparently, Nason’s approach to providing healthcare is working; the Summerville center is the fifth one to be built since 2005.

“We are coming to Summerville because there is demand from patients there,” he said. “That’s what we’re about – when they speak, we listen, and if they want it, we’ll be there.”

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