SELBYVILLE — Kevin Mull, Dr. Aaron Green and the staff at Lower Shore Immediate Care in Selbyville are bringing more accessible health care options to Sussex County.
The independently practicing group opened on June 3 with hopes of making a splash in the Selbyville community which can be found just minutes from the hustle and bustle of coastal life.
“We saw that there was a need for these services in this area because it’s continuing to build up and grow,” Mull told the Delaware Business Times. “The next closest urgent care is Beebe in Millsboro and standalone emergency room and urgent care facilities in Ocean View. Then, the next urgent care facility would be in west Ocean City.”
The urgent care facility in Millsboro is 9.5 miles down the road, or a 15-minute drive from the new Lower Shore Immediate Care in Selbyville. Ocean View is just over 11 miles from Selbyville, or more than a 20-minute drive while Ocean City is 16 miles away, or a nearly 30-minute drive. Summer traffic could easily lengthen any one of those drives.
For Mull, the need for more health care options in Sussex County is palpable from the TidalHealth emergency room in which he also works. With a growing shortage of primary health care providers in Delaware, urgent care facilities have grown throughout the state to fill the gaps of care. ChristianaCare, which has been expanding rapidly, has added 10 urgent care facilities in the past three years.
Earlier this month, ChristianaCare-GoHealth Urgent Care announced it has taken over most of the spaces where MedExpress Urgent Care had recently vacated throughout the state.
“Nationwide, health care access in general is difficult. There’s such a shortage with primary care. There’s a lot of primary care offices that are not even taking patients because they’re so overwhelmed. When somebody does have a primary care doctor to try to get in for a particular problem, they can’t even get in. We just keep hearing these kinds of things,” Mull told DBT.
Thinking back to his work in the emergency department, Mull said new health care options can be critical in helping relieve the access problem.
“In the ER, you could be waiting there for hours and it’s really because of the access to health care. We thought, if we could help the emergency room by offloading some of the less critical patients and injuries, that will allow the ER to focus on some of the more critically ill patients,” Mull said.
Mull, Green and another partner also own an independently operated urgent care center in Princess Anne, Md.
“It’s not connected, but that practice has been open since 2016 and we’ve really made a huge impact in that community. We just knew there was a need in this community, too, and it’s been pretty well received. I’ve been to the Selbyville town meeting, spoke with the mayor and the council members and they’re really excited to have us here,” Mull said.
Lower Shore Immediate Care in Selbyville offers a lab, X-ray capabilities and staff with experience with musculoskeletal pain and injuries, joint injection, suturing and other needs.