A former Old National Bank building in Brookfield, located on West Capital Drive east of Brookfield Road, will soon be home to a physician-owned-and-operated multi-disciplinary clinic and ambulatory surgery center.
Doctors, and husband-and-wife partners,
Ramagopal Tumuluri and
Sumana Koduri, recently submitted plans to the city of Brookfield to renovate roughly half of the 19,900-square-foot, two-story structure at 18200 Capitol Drive. The project includes tearing down the drive-thru area on the western side of the building and replacing it with a 2,368-square-foot addition. The renovation and addition would give the physicians 12,372 square feet between the two floors.
Currently dubbed
Brookfield Cardiovascular Assoc. & Medical Office, Ambulatory Surgery Center, the plan will be to use the first floor of the building for out-patient or “day” surgeries, and the second floor for clinic and physician office space.
Tumuluri, an interventional cardiologist who currently practices at Aurora St. Luke’s, would perform angioplasties, and other cardiovascular procedures involving stents. While, Koduri, a urogynecologist who currently practices with Froedtert and the Medical College of Wisconsin, would perform various procedures related to her practice, including vaginal sling operations used to treat incontinence.
Other procedures could also be performed at the ambulatory surgery center depending on what other specialty physicians join the practice, Tumuluri said.
The surgery center will include three procedure-related rooms: a full-fledged, 600-square-foot operating room, a hybrid catheterization lab with a fixed C-Arm, and a smaller operating room. There will also be six post-operating bays where patients can recover before going home for the day.
The second floor will include a cardiology clinic focused on peripheral vascular, vein, heart valve and heart rhythm conditions, and the Women’s Center for Incontinence and Pelvic Health led by Koduri. Other specialties could include foot and pulmonary care.
Tulumuri said he is still talking with physicians about joining the clinic.
The clinic itself is slated to be in operation by November, with the surgery center opening in April or May. Steinbach Dental is slated to maintain its practice within the eastern section of the building.
While southeastern Wisconsin is home to a handful of multi-specialty clinics and ambulatory surgery centers, almost none of those are independently run by physicians themselves. Most are run by large health care networks like ProHealth Care, Froedtert Health, Ascension and Aurora.
Tulumuri and Koduri said they are building their own clinic, because they want to have greater independence in their respective practices, and to provide better patient care that can be individualized.
“A lot of patients are tired of the big systems,” Koduri said.
“They get scared when they go to big system hospitals,” Tulumuri added, noting that having a clinic separate from a large hospital can also make such procedures more convenient and accessible.
“Here they park in front of the building, get their procedure, and they are out,” he said. “And, historically speaking, the cost is one-third or less than what it costs in the hospital – 90.6% of day surgeries are now being done in ambulatory surgery centers.”
Koduri also pointed out that care can often be delivered far more quickly in an ambulatory surgery center.
“It’s hard to get into the main hospital ORs, and now the hospital-affiliated ambulatory surgery centers are getting backed up,” she said. “Most of the hospitals are having long wait times, both for patients and physicians. Sometimes procedures are postponed because physicians are not getting the time to operate.”
With the new clinic and ambulatory center, the partners are hoping to deliver subspecialty care much faster than patients are used to these days, they said.
[caption id="attachment_575232" align="aligncenter" width="768"]
Doctors, and husband-and-wife partners, Ramagopal Tumuluri and Sumana Koduri, recently submitted plans to the city of Brookfield to renovate roughly half of a 19,900-square-foot, two-story structure at 18200 Capitol Drive and turn it into a clinic and ambulatory surgery center. (Cara Spoto/BizTimes)[/caption]
