Kirkpatrick Family Care

Kirkpatrick Family Care has been serving Cowlitz County since Dr. Neal opened up in 1949 and Dr. Wendell joined in 1953.

Our mission is to be available to serve our patients when they need help.  To accommodate this we have established unique office hours at our Longview internal medicine clinics. Kirkpatrick Family Care is open 365 days a year. Four hours every Saturday, Sunday and holidays, and twelve hours (8:00 A.M. to 8:00 P.M.) on weekdays.

Being open during the evening and on weekends helps out patients who are unable to come into the office during normal business hours.It also allows patients to receive care in our clinic, instead of the Emergency Room.

OFFICE CARE VERSUS EMERGENCY ROOM CARE.

Office care is more efficient because we serve our own patients, not the entire county.   Further, we have your records and the provider you are seeing may even have taken care of you previously.  Thus our staffing can be more efficient than is feasible in the ER, where one moment the facility may be overwhelmed and the next, empty, but which must be staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year..

Furthermore, ERs are subject to far larger regulatory burdens than are offices.  Also, hospital buildings must be strong enough to withstand the worst earthquake ever recorded in the world… so construction costs are astronomical.  Finally, the large number of shifts to be covered, requires a very large number of doctors and practitioners; hence the chances that the one seeing you there, actually knows your case, is extremely small.  Hence, ER doctor visits generally take more time and generate a much higher charge, customarily at the “new patient comprehensive” rate, which is around 4-5 times that of a regular office visit.  Labs and x-rays also cost 3-5 times as much as in a clinic..

Therefore, the cost of seeing you in the ER for a laceration or sprain or infection or other symptom, may run up to 10 times what the charges are in a clinic.  Faced with these extra costs, insurance companies generally create an ER co-pay that is 2, 3 or 4 times what is required in an office clinic.

At Kirkpatrick Family Care, we understand that you cannot always plan when you are going to need medical help, which is why we allow patients to come in for urgent, same-day visits when needed. We are open everyday of the year – no exceptions. The streak of consecutive days began on January 1, 1996.