Your kid is sick, but can’t go to the ER? Modesto’s first pediatric urgent care clinic opens
Say your kiddo has an earache. Or tummy troubles. Or a bad cough. But your pediatrician doesn’t have any available appointments. Going to the ER is too scary for your little one. And there’s too long a wait at the adult urgent care.
A new pediatric urgent care, the only one of its kind in the region specializing specifically in young patients, will debut this week in Modesto to help families in a lurch. The Lenser & Brush Pediatric Urgent Care at Sylvan Avenue and Coffee Road opens Monday and will be staffed daily for non-life-threatening illnesses or non-traumatic injuries.
Longtime Modesto pediatrician Dr. Dena Lenser and family nurse practitioner Lisa Brush are partnering on the new endeavor, which seeks to fill a growing gap for many area parents. While Modesto has many adult urgent cares, as well as all-ages emergency rooms, the city hasn’t had a specialty urgent care just for pediatrics (from birth up to age 21) until now.
Lenser, who was raised in Modesto and comes from a family of doctors and medical professionals, has been a local pediatrician since 1997. In 2003, she started her own practice, Modesto Pediatrics on Coffee Road, which continues today.
But in recent years — brought on in part by the COVID-19 pandemic — more pediatricians have retired or left the area and made it harder for parents to have their children seen in a timely manner for serious but non-life-threatening conditions like pink eye or a sprained ankle, she said.
Lenser, who runs Modesto Pediatrics with fellow pediatrician Dr. Ann Marie Truscello, said their office routinely sees 60 to 70 children a day and still has to turn away about 20 patients daily who are waiting to get appointments.
“It’s very hard to turn people away when all you’ve done your whole life is care for people. It’s a bad feeling,” Lenser said.
Instead, parents have resorted to long waits in already overcrowded area emergency departments. Lenser said some urgent cares won’t take young pediatric patients because they don’t have physicians who specialize in pediatrics. And the much-lauded Valley Children’s Healthcare specialty care center that opened in Modesto in 2019 does not handle urgent care cases.
So with Brush, who works at Modesto Pediatrics as well and has been a family nurse practitioner for seven years, Lenser hopes their new pediatric clinic will help parents more quickly get their children the care they need. Brush said they had the idea for the center before COVID, but when the pandemic hit, it paused all progress.
Now, the urgent care is ready for patients in a 2,200-square-foot space in a retail complex on Sylvan next to Umi Sushi and across from Marie Callender’s. Lenser said they picked the northeast Modesto location for its proximity to Memorial Medical Center and nearby medical offices, as well as its easy access for residents of Riverbank and Oakdale.
The long-vacant former office suite has been transformed into an open clinic with a lobby, waiting area and five exam rooms. The waiting room has brightly colored posters and play areas for children. The center’s logo includes silhouettes of a little cowgirl and cowboy, a nod to the area’s agricultural roots.
The urgent care will be staffed at all times with medical professionals and feature a rotating staff of pediatricians and family nurse practitioners. All of the staff members have some medical training, including office manager Wendi Jones, who is also a medical assistant.
The clinic will be all walk-ins, with no individual appointments (though batches of school-required exams or testing can be scheduled). Lenser said patients will be assessed at check-in and seen based on urgency. The center accepts many forms of private insurance and cash payment. It is also in the process of finalizing Medi-Cal approval.
Brush said the urgent care won’t be able to handle concussions, facial wounds or other traumatic injuries. Those still will require a trip to the ER. But it will be open for all manner of testing, minor injuries including sprains and burns and illnesses including asthma, flu, respiratory syncytial virus and COVID. Brush said she hopes the opening will reduce the strain on overburdened pediatric offices and ERs.
“We’re not taking the place of the ER or of primary doctors, but we want to be a stopgap for parents when their child has a non-life-threatening issue that needs to be seen immediately,” Brush said. “This way, they don’t have to wait in an ER for 12 hours with their sick child and then go to work the next day. Nobody wants that. ”
The Lenser & Brush Pediatric Urgent Care, at 1300 Sylvan Ave., Suite C-7, in Modesto, will be open 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. weekdays and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. For more information, call 209-225-9044.
