MD Now Medical Centers, Inc. Awarded $167,250 Grant for Job Development, Diagnostic Equipment 

New Urgent Care Center to Offer Relief to ER Overcrowding, Jobs to the Community 

West Palm Beach, FL - (Tuesday, December 7, 2005) - Palm Beach County's most anxiously awaited urgent care center will now be its most state of the art, thanks to a federal government grant which received final approval at today's Palm Beach County Board of Commissioners meeting. 

MD Now Medical Centers, Inc. has been selected as a recipient for a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) issued by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and distributed by Palm Beach County's Department of Housing and Community Development committee. It received the highest rating from Palm Beach County's Department of Housing and Community Development committee among all other competing companies. 

The private company, owned by Peter Lamelas, M.D., M.B.A., intends to develop two more urgent care centers in the area within the next two years. Urgent care centers are designed for treatment of minor trauma (pain, fractures and sprains) and other non-life threatening illness such as cough, sore throat, flu, fevers, cuts or burns. The facility is expected to reduce the growing problem of emergency room overcrowding, alleviating some of what studies show are up to eighty percent of all ER visits that are of a non-critical nature and could be treated in a less costly urgent care setting. 

The first MD Now Urgent Care / Walk-In Medical Center is a forty four hundred square foot freestanding medical building in central Palm Beach County and is being financed by Fidelity Federal Bank & Trust. It is near completion and is set to open its doors February 1, 2005. 

Lamelas, who also has a Masters degree in Business Administration from Nova Southeastern University in  Fort Lauderdale, Florida, has been an ER doctor for over twenty years. He served as Medical Director of Emergency Medicine at Columbia Hospital of the Palm Beaches for over seventeen years and is on staff at five local hospitals, including Bethesda Memorial, Wellington Regional, St. Mary's Hospital and Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center. 

He served as the Medical Director for the Riviera Beach Fire Rescue/EMS services for the past fourteen years. In 2001, he was selected as one of twelve physicians in the state to serve on the Florida Board of Medicine, appointed by Governor Jeb Bush. He was recently elected Vice Chairman of the Board. 

Lake Worth urgent-care center to offer lower costs than ERs
By Stephanie Horvath

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Dr. Peter Lamelas says his new urgent-care center will pack the punch of a hospital emergency room at a fraction of the cost.

The former director of emergency medicine at Columbia Hospital in West Palm Beach is opening MD Now Medical Center in Lake Worth in February. Like most urgent-care centers, it will treat non-life-threatening injuries and illnesses. But unlike most, the center will have the latest in high-tech equipment usually only seen in hospitals, thanks to a $167,250 grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

MD Now will use paperless medical records and digital images and will have equipment for X-rays and EKG scans.

"It's like retail medicine. We are our own little mini-emergency room," said Lamelas, who works in four local hospital emergency rooms.

Lamelas said a visit to his urgent-care center — which will accept Medicare and major insurers — will cost $80 to $200, far less than a hospital emergency-room visit, which he said usually costs a minimum of $1,000. But Lamelas wants the differences to extend beyond price.

"When you go into an emergency room, you're just a number," he said. "In our facility, it's going to be very customer-service oriented."

Company Information:  MD Now Medical Centers, Inc. 

Lake Worth Location
4570 Lantana Road 
Lake Worth, FL 33463 
Main: 561-963-9881 

Royal Palm Beach Location
11551 Southern Blvd
Royal Palm Beach, FL 33411
Main: 561:798-9411

Boca Raton Location
7035 Beracasa Way
Boca Raton, FL 33433
Main: 561-361-1515

Company Website: www.MyMDNow.com 
Email: info@mymdnow.com

Back to Home Page