By SARAH CAMPBELL
Leader staff writer
Two side-by-side newcomers to the Cabot area, the Excel Health clinic and Advanced Physical Therapy at 2251 Bill Foster Hwy., are doing well and already planning for expansion. Both opened on Nov. 21 and treat all ages.
Excel Health is considering a second location off Main Street, according to owner Jay Cooper. The clinic is also looking at opening on weekends. It is hiring more staff now to do just that.
And Mitzi Gibson of Advanced Physical Therapy said she’d love to knock out some walls for more room.
Excel Health is an urgent care, men’s health and medical weight loss clinic with six exam rooms. It treats patients of all ages, although the staff said most patients are children or seniors.
The clinic offers testosterone therapy for men, a medical weight-loss program for men and women, consultations with an onsite nutritionist, Lipovicine injections and HCG injections.
Excel Health’s wellness side administers biometric screenings, TB screenings, school physicals (ages 12 and up), diabetes screenings, vitamin deficiency screenings, vitamin B12 injections and immunizations/vaccinations for a variety of ailments. The staff plans to offer Department of Transportation physicals and drug testing soon.
The acute-care side treats pink eye, sore throat, sinusitis, URI/bronchitis, skin rash, poison ivy, chickenpox, shingles, minor sprains, wounds, burns, minor GYN problems, abscesses and boils and sexually transmitted diseases. It also offers pregnancy testing and pap smears.
The clinic can handle about 30 patients a day, Cooper said.
“It’s going very well. The clinic has been very successful so far. It’s actually outperformed the one we have in Bryant, by far, actually,” he continued. “I’d say we’ve seen five times more patients in two weeks than we saw in a whole month in Bryant.”
Nurse practitioner Elaine Sherrill added, “They’re so glad we’re here. We’re needed.”
Advanced Physical Therapy treats patients with pregnancy-related conditions, postpartum conditions, pelvic floor weakness, pelvic floor pain, post mastectomy complications and more.
It also provides general orthopedic physical therapy service for joint replacement, back or neck injury, rotator cuff repair, fractures, sprains and strains, arthritis, back and neck pain, bursitis and tendonitis and foot and ankle pain.
Gibson — who co-owns Advanced Physical Therapy with Cooper and his sister, Trisha Cooper — has worked in the field for 20 years. Eight were spent in private practice, and she specializes in prenatal and postpartum care.
Advanced Physical Therapy is open a few days a week, but she hopes it will go full-time soon. In Little Rock, her typical workload would be helping 15 to 20 patients a day.
“When you’re referred for physical therapy, you can go anywhere you want to go. So, I feel certain that a lot of the people here probably see physicians in Little Rock or in North Little Rock, other communities, but they don’t have to go back there for PT,” Gibson continued. “We want people to be able to have physical therapy where they live and not only serve a growing population here but the surrounding communities.”
Along with convenience, Gibson said Advanced Physical Therapy offers quality care and wants the public to know they don’t have to the clinic a doctor refers them to.
Cooper said Excel Health accepts all insurance plans and is undergoing the process necessary for the clinic to serve parents with ARKids First policies.
He also explained how the advantage of urgent care clinics is that they are much less expensive than visits to the emergency room, with a typical clinic visit coming in at about $65, while trips to the emergency room can cost a patient hundreds.
Cooper noted that Cabot was an ideal location for his business because “the closest doctor to this location is quite a ways from here” and the closest emergency room at North Metro Medical Center in Jacksonville is “quite a drive.”
Cooper also said, “We wanted to bring really quality medical care to this side of town.”
He and Gibson agreed that the two businesses being neighbors is unique. That symbiotic relationship, Gibson said, is compounded by the gym next door in suite A. Excel Health and Advanced Physical Therapy are in suite B.
Her goal is for patients to graduate from physical therapy to an at-home or gym exercise regiment.
Also, those who may strain a muscle at the gym could be referred to her office and/or the clinic, Gibson noted.
