Women’s health group to see patients weekly at Desert View campus

Quality care.

That’s what one Las Vegas-based women’s health care group says it’s excited to provide to the women of Pahrump when it opens its newest practice here next month.

Women’s Health Associates of Southern Nevada is scheduled to start seeing patients on a once-a-week basis starting May 6 on the Desert View Hospital campus.

The group will be sharing office space with the Mountain Valley Physicians Group.

Dr. John Martin, president of WHASN, said the practice will offer gynecological and obstetrical services as well as mild surgical and outpatient procedures at the hospital as well.

“We’ll offer full obstetrical care, except delivery of course as there’s no delivery services out here right now. We do ultrasounds, prenatal care, and fetal monitoring for higher risk instances … annual exams, pap smears and gynecological imaging and mammograms,” WHASN Dr. Sheldon Paul explained.

WHASN is comprised of 13 practices, which formed under the WHASN name approximately five years ago in response to the current health care climate.

“We are a combination of practitioners in the Las Vegas Valley who actually have been practicing for a number of years and saw the writing on the wall with the Affordable Care Act and other changes in health care that the era of smaller offices is going away, but yet we didn’t want to give up the close relationships you have in a small office,” he said. “So we found a model where we can be a large practice, but still have each care center function independently and where the patients don’t lose that close relationship with their physicians.”

Dr. Donna Miller, vice president of WHASN, said the 13 practices were chosen based on the level of quailty care they provide to their patients.

“We’ve all been in the community and we all knew who the physicians were that we wanted to work with. That’s how we kind of formed,” she said.

Although Martin said benefits like the ability to share certain office costs and staff has been beneficial to all the WHASN care centers, one of the other benefits they are now taking advantage of is the ability to extend their services into the smaller communities surrounding Las Vegas, without stretching the resources of any one particular doctor too thin.

“What was really neat was we realized we could provide services like this because we have such a large workforce of physicians. It would be hard for me to provide two to three days out here and still maintain my practice in Las Vegas. And I know that’s what you’ve had. But for us it’s easy. We have 31 physicians who could potentially come out here and see patients, so we think it’s one of the secondary benefits of forming a larger practice,” he said.

“When you have the manpower you can provide a lot of services where you normally couldn’t and it doesn’t put an overbarrance on one individual. I was born in Vegas and you know all the people around in the outside communities have always had this lack. I have a lot of family up north actually and you just see they could benefit from this kind of service,” Paul said.

Although the group employs 31 physicians, Martin said their goal is to rotate eight to 12 of those doctors through the Pahrump practice on a regular basis.

While the group’s plans do not initially include delivering babies at DVH, it is something they are looking into bringing back to the hospital in the future.

“I think going back into the OB market is a realistic expectation in the future. It may be a few years down the road. This is step one. As we grow the business and see how it works out here I think that’s a real possibility,” said DVH CEO Kelly Adams.

When WHASN opens locally next month, they plan to have providers in the clinic one day a week on Tuesdays. That schedule could expand to two or more days a week in the future depending on the level of demand for the group’s services.

“The hospital couldn‘t be more pleased to introduce this service to the community,” Adams said.

For more information on the new practice contact the hospital at 775-751-7100.