The Villages Medical Rediscovery
By David R. Corder
The Daily Sun (Saturday, December 6, 2008)
It’s early Friday morning, but already the flow of patients is near capacity at Tri-County Pulmonary & MultiSpecialty Group in the Buenos Aires Professional Plaza.
A similar scene played out around the same time at the affiliated Life Family Practice Center, across the highway from The Villages Regional Hospital.
Patient demand these days has posed such a strategic challenge that physicians and business partners Nelson Kraucak and Marivic Villa have embarked on a new era of expansion.
During the next few months, these board-certified physicians plan to open a third office in the Southern Trace Professional Plaza, renovate Life Family’s current offices and expand the existing urgent-care operations in the Buenos Aires office.
“It’s time to rediscover ourselves,” Kraucak said. “So we’re expanding to accommodate our patients.”
Grazing Ground
Many patients know Kraucak as one of the first physicians to establish a medical practice in The Villages.
Since it’s opening about 13 years ago, Kraucak said, Life Family has focused on serving Villagers’ unique needs.
Rather than just offering family medical services, Kraucak created a practice that included specialties in holistic and anti-aging medicine.
“There really was nothing around this area,” Kraucak recalled. “The Villages Regional Hospital was all grazing ground then. So I established a very unique practice where I combined both alternative medicine together with regular medicine.”
Four years later, Villa founded Tri-County Pulmonary, specializing in all areas of respiratory diseases and rehabilitation, as an affiliated practice. She also founded an urgent-care service because of her background as a critical-care physician.
Two years ago, however, Kraucak and Villa transferred pulmonary and Urgent Care to the Buenos Aires office for the same reason they’re expanding again.
“We got so crowded in the first building.” Villa said.
Multifaceted Operations
Since the last expansion, Villa said, the Buenos Aires office has evolved into a multifaceted operation built upon the latest in technology.
Besides adopting a paperless patient-recording system, the practice installed a 16-slice, CT (Computed axial Tomography) technology, ultrasound and even opened an on-site laboratory.
“So, if you have an emergency, like acute abdominal pain, we can do all the tests and get the results in the same day,” Villa said. “Therefore, we can make immediate decisions: whether the patient goes to the hospital or whether the patient goes home.”
Meanwhile, Kraucak’s holistic and anti-aging medical practice became popular as word spread about his treatments. He often prescribes vitamins and nutrients instead of pharmaceuticals, for instance, to deal with a number of chronic autoimmune diseases.
The success of that practice, Kraucak said, explains why he’s now developing a medical spa at the original office, in addition to his general and family practice.
“For the past 13 years, I’ve been making patients feel good from the inside,” Kraucak said. “But they look at the mirror and say ‘That’s not how I feel, the way I look’. So I want them to look better as well.”
Golf Cart Accessibility
Because of its location, the new Southern Trace office eventually will become a primary office for general patients, Villa said. Several factors account for the future use of that office.
“The main thing, it’s centrally located,” Villa said. “Two, it’s golf cart accessible. We have golf cart accessibility here at Buenos Aires, but not as good as Southern Trace. That area also is still growing, and we have a lot of patients we can cover over there.”
All the changes taking place evolved from a five-year business plan the physicians adopted, Dan Arsenijevith, administrator of Life Family Practice and Tri-County Pulmonary, said.
“Our vision of the group consists of strategically positioning ourselves as close to our patients with their needs in mind,” Arsenijevith said. “Our patients are very loyal and willing to travel here, but we want to move more closer to them.”
Once the plan is executed, Arsenijevith added, patients should discover easy access to all the medical services and a growing staff of qualified health care providers.
“The concept is to give our patients one-stop medical services,” Arsenijevith said. “Our Villagers are very busy. They have lots of activities, and we don’t want to be wasting their time.”