Austin Regional Clinic continues to expand in Hays County

HAYS COUNTY — Austin Regional Clinic (ARC) has its eyes set on expanding in Hays County to ensure that all patients’ needs are filled.

Founded in 1980 by Norman Chenven, a family medicine physician, ARC has grown to be one of the largest physician-owned health care providers in Central Texas. The multispecialty group has more than 30 clinics spanning across 14 cities, including Kyle, Buda and Dripping Springs.

“As the city [of Austin] has grown, we've expanded our locations. We started with a couple of large what we call our hub locations at our Far West location and our South 1st location. Those locations now have multiple providers and multiple specialties, but as the city has continued to grow out, we've added presence in the north region in Cedar Park, Round Rock, Georgetown and Hutto,” said Chief Medical Officer Dr. Manish Naik. “With Kyle being one of the fastest growing communities in the southern region, we found very quickly that our main Kyle location was so busy at Plum Creek that we recognized the need for a second location at Center Street. Those are two of our busiest locations.”

ARC’s second clinic in Kyle recently expanded its services to offer endocrinology and diabetes care. Dr. Farheen Yousuf joined the staff at ARC Center Street, seeing patients ages 18 and older. In addition to general endocrinology care, Dr. Yousuf provides diabetes services through ARC’s Diabetes Care program, which offers care for patients living with any type of diabetes, including Type 1, Type 2 and gestational diabetes.

“Endocrinology is one of the subject areas that a lot of primary care doctors do a fair bit of, so our family medicine, internal medicine and pediatricians do some endocrinology. A lot of those doctors manage some basic thyroid conditions and diabetes. But as we've grown as an organization, we found a need for some additional expertise in some of those areas,” Dr. Naik said. “We have actually had one other endocrinologist at our [Ascension} Seton Northwest location for many years. But her focus has been more on infertility, thyroid and parathyroid conditions. We haven't had an endocrinologist in our group that has focused on diabetes, which is one of the more common things we've seen. So, as our group grows, and we really wanted to try to meet the needs of our patients, we're now adding an endocrinologist that will not only do some of those thyroid and other hormonal conditions, but can also address some of the more complex diabetes patients. We anticipate we will grow the number of endocrinologists in our group over time.”

Dr. Naik explained that patients who come into one of the ARC locations will get a continuity of care experience, including extended availability hours, which may be difficult to find elsewhere.

“Because we have all of these different specialties under our own umbrella, and they all use the same electronic health record, when you see any of the providers at Austin Regional Clinic, you get a complete connected care or continuity of care experience. It's never an issue of [wondering] what happened at that visit and what was done. Every one of our doctors can very easily tell in an up-to-date fashion what has happened at all of your other visits. It becomes a really coordinated care experience and all of our different specialties work very collaboratively and closely together to make sure our patients get the best care,” he said. “Not only do we have clinics open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., but we have an after hours location that is open in the evening and on weekends, including in Kyle. So, patients don't necessarily have to go to an urgent care that may not have all of their health information or go to an emergency room when it's not needed.”

“We also have 24/7 nursing advice on the phone for all of our patients and we have a telemedicine platform called NormanMD, which is basically a 24/7 access to a physician for any urgent care type needs that come up. It is a separate service outside of normal health insurance and patients can get it either through purchasing a subscription themselves at a low monthly rate or some employers’ health plans have started to offer that as a benefit for their plan,” Dr. Naik continued. “That service literally is within five minutes, you can text a physician [or] sometimes it's a video visit. But you get a pretty quick answer to urgent things that may come up."

When more clinics were being added in Kyle, there was initially a need for additional primary care services in the growing community, according to Dr. Naik, but it has since become almost like another hub location area for ARC.

There are currently four ARC clinics in Hays County: Kyle Plum Creek (opened in May 2009), Buda off FM 967 (opened in November 2017), Dripping Springs off Ranch Road 12 (opened in August 2019) and Center Street in Kyle (opened in September 2020). Within the next five years, another ARC location is anticipated to be built in Buda.

For more information about what all ARC has to offer, visit www.austinregionalclinic.com.