In response to the increasing patient load, Malibu Urgent Care Center (MUCC) will extend its daily operations from eight hours a day to 11 hours a day-from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.-seven days a week, 365 days a year. The increase in hours will begin on Tuesday.
“We have been more busy than we have been in the past,” said Dr. Jill Furgurson, a veteran in emergency medicine and co-medical director and primary care physician of MUCC. She is also an emergency physician for Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura and is on staff at Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica.
Dr. David Frankle is the co-medical director and also a primary care physician at MUCC, having served in that capacity since 1994. In addition, he is an emergency physician at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and is on staff at Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica. Either Frankle or Furgurson is on duty at MUCC every day, along with orthopedic surgeon Dr. Walter O’Brien, who is there twice a week or on-call.
Both Furgurson and Frankle have seen the ups and downs that MUCC has gone through. The center was in danger of closing two years ago when the once-affiliated Saint John’s Health Center stopped subsidizing it.
“It’s either feast or famine here,” Furgurson said, “and in the times of famine, we need to have a nest egg.”
Responding to the crisis, “Friends of Malibu Urgent Care” was formed, MUCC’s much needed nest egg.
Friends is a nonprofit organization whose sole purpose is to keep Malibu’s only local urgent care walk-in facility open and running smoothly. Founded and formed by Malibu residents, doctors, Saint John’s Health Care Center, Malibu City Council and Pepperdine University, the organization’s job is to oversee the fundraising of MUCC.
Malibu residents Helene Eisenberg and Marlene Matlow spearheaded the idea of Friends of Malibu Urgent Care, along with Roy March, who is the president, and Michael Klein, who serves as chairman of the board.
In the summertime, when Malibu’s population rises from 13,000 to approximately 16,000, due to tourists as well as people occupying their summer homes, MUCC gets very busy.
“Summer is our busiest time,” Furgurson explained. “We see a lot of dislocated shoulders, fractures and ear infections due to surfing accidents.” Also keeping the doctors occupied are “severe sunburns due to lack of sunscreen, facial lacerations, rashes due to the poison oak in the area, snake bites and nose bleeds.”
MUCC also treats many Pepperdine students, even though they have their own health facility on campus. “I think some of the students feel more comfortable here,” Furgurson said. The reason was apparent when she added, “I treat a lot of urinary tract infections, Pap smears and sexually transmitted diseases. In the summer there are also many travel immunizations, and lately there have been a lot of worker’s comp cases.”
About one-third of MUCC’s patients are children, who come in with the flu, high fever, rashes and broken bones.
The six rooms at MUCC include spaces for gynecology exams, ear-nose-throat and eye exams, cardiac/IV, surgery, X-rays and suture. “We try to treat everything we can here,” Furgurson said, “but sometimes patients have to be air-lifted to UCLA or taken to St. John’s Health Center,” the two most commonly used emergency facilities for local patients. “There was one patient who had a very serious rattlesnake bite and he was airlifted to UCLA-they handle snakebites very well.”
As of now, it may seem that MUCC is in good hands, thanks to Friends. Yet, an urgent care facility is extremely costly to run, especially when it’s not subsidized by a large hospital or medical center, which is now the case with MUCC.
“It’s still a lot of hard work,” Furgurson emphasized. “It is very expensive to keep an urgent care facility running. Our payroll is huge, equipment and doctors are expensive, but it’s totally worth it.”
For information about donating to Malibu Urgent Care Center, located at 23656 Pacific Coast Hwy., call 310.456.0512.