New Urgent Care and Telehealth clinic opens in downtown Sonoma

A new Urgent Care and occupational medicine clinic has opened in downtown Sonoma, which markets itself as providing services that “cost 80% to 90% less than hospital emergency rooms, with shorter wait times.”

Sonoma Urgent Care and Telehealth opened recently at 446 W. Napa St., joining the company’s clinics in Benicia, which opened in July 2020, and Napa, which debuted in October 2020.

“Our Napa clinic was seeing a large volume of patients from Sonoma,” said Dr. Ian Ahwah, president of the company. “Therefore, we saw there was a need for an Urgent Care clinic in Sonoma. We’re doing a soft open until we procure all of our equipment and complete the tenant improvements. We’re experiencing supply chain delays in production and delivery of our medical equipment.”

The Sonoma clinic is scheduled to officially open on Wednesday, March 1, and initially provide services from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays.

“I hope weekend hours will begin in May,” Ahwah said. “However, this is dependent on procuring adequate staffing. Staffing has been one of our biggest problems to date.”

The clinic will be staffed by providers in the company’s current pool, who will also rotate between the other two sites. The firm is trying to recruit local providers to serve at the Sonoma site.

In-person and tele-medicine services will be offered for both emergencies and nonemergencies.

“Usually, ERs charge both a facility fee and a professional fee for patient visits,” Ahwah said. “The combined fees often add up to thousands of dollars. Urgent care, like a doctor’s office, can only charge a professional fee, which is often the fraction of the cost of a typical ER visit.”

The Mayo Clinic confirmed that Urgent Care is often cheaper, pointing out that such operations are more limited in the services they can provide. “Urgent Care clinics have set hours and an established list of conditions treated. As a result, Urgent Care clinics often are less expensive and have shorter wait times than emergency departments,” the Mayo Clinic shared in the article, “Emergency vs. Urgent Care: What's the difference?”

In addition to providing same-day digital X-rays and laboratory services, the new Sonoma clinic will be equipped to handle minor surgical procedures through lacerations, abscesses and foreign body removal. Walk-in treatments will be available for everyday illnesses and injuries, including colds, flu and upper respiratory infections.

The clinic also will serve as a U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and non-DOT certified drug collection site and offer pre-employment physicals and annual health screenings. Other services will include breath alcohol, hearing, lung and tuberculosis tests, first-aid assistance and vaccines.

Specialty services will include allergy testing and treatment, personal well-being options, sports medicine and orthopedic care, and comprehensive wound care.

Most commercial insurance plans, Medicare, TriCare/TriWest, all major workers’ comp carriers and self-pay by patients will be accepted. The clinic does not accept MediCal.

Members of the Sonoma Valley Chamber of Commerce have been invited to attend a grand opening party on Thursday, Feb. 23. The event is not open to the public.

“We will have a grand opening event for the community when it is warmer, in May,” Ahwah said.

Ahwah is an emergency medicine physician who received his medical degree from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City and an advanced degree from Harvard University. He has more than 30 years experience as a physician and has served at several local hospitals, including Sutter Solano Medical Center in Vallejo, San Leandro Hospital and John Muir Health-Walnut Creek Medical Center.

The Sonoma clinic can be reached at 707-940-1001.

Reach the reporter, Dan Johnson, at daniel.johnson@sonomanews.com.