OB-GYN Associates to double its footprint on Longley Lane

When Jeffrey Snyder began working as executive director for OB-GYN Associates nearly 17 years ago, the practice had eight physicians. Today, it has 16, along with five nurse practitioners and three ultrasound technicians.

Despite two physical expansions into a total of 15,000 square feet on the fourth floor of 645. N. Arlington Ave., OB-GYN Associates has been hard-pressed for enough space to accommodate expectant mothers and women needing gynecological care. That will change in March when the practice moves to a new location at 635 Innovation Drive.

OB-GYN Associates is nearly doubling its footprint to 27,000 square feet and will take the entire third floor of a new building on the southwest corner of the Northern Nevada Sierra Medical Center campus on Longley Lane.

“This has been a great space, and Saint Mary’s has been a great partner,” Snyder said. “But we basically have been stuffed in this space for quite a while, and we needed more room.”

In 2005, when OB-GYN Associates established its practice at 645 N. Arlington, the population of Washoe County was just under 390,000, the U.S. Census Bureau reports. Today, that number has swelled to almost 500,000. That 25 percent increase in residents has led to healthy growth among medical practices throughout the Truckee Meadows.

Snyder told NNBW that OB-GYN Associates has experienced more growth from the gynecological side of its practice than the obstetrics side.

“It is interesting with obstetrics and gynecology – and this is true in every market – the number of births aren’t growing commensurate with population growth, but the need for gynecological services has,” he said. “The obstetrics side is still growing, but the overall number of people moving into the area is driving our overall patient volumes.”

Moody Weiske Contractors is the general contractor on tenant improvements for OB-GYN Associates. Snyder said the practice had been looking for a new home for about five years and ran the full gamut of possibilities, from constructing its own building to renovating an existing building to leasing a facility from Saint Mary’s Health Network or Renown Health.

Jeff Snyder

 

Exorbitant construction costs, however, and the opening of Northern Nevada Sierra Medical Center, coupled with construction of new office space on campus, led to the new location.

“The expansion really allows us to see patients when they want to be seen,” Snyder said. “When you are space-constrained, your choices are to either extend your hours or increase the days that you work. In the new space, we will be able to meet the demands of our patients when they are available and our physicians are available.

“Ultimately, we will be able to grow in that space,” he added. “We probably will add two to three physicians over the next three years, and with the age of certain physicians in the community and retirements that will be happening, we might have to hire more than that.”

OB-GYN Associate’s current headcount is 85, including 16 physicians, Snyder said. Staff have been working for several months to implement changes to its patient flow to fine-tune operations in the new space, he added.

“We are redoing some operational ways we flow patients through our practice,” Snyder said. “Our leadership team started it here about four months ago, and we found some hiccups. We are working through those things, as well as making sure everyone knows where we are going.”

The physical expansion better positions the practice to accommodate patients in numerous ways, Snyder said. Among them:

• A 39 percent increase in exam, flex ultrasound and minor procedure rooms, from 36 to 50.

• An increase in onsite ultrasound rooms from 10 to 12, including upgraded technology for fetal anatomy and gynecological cases.

• Doubling the number of non-stress-test stations to 10 in order to provide fetal monitoring times that are more convenient for patients.

• A dedicated injection space to provide more timely options for birth control and other types of injections.

Ancillary staff also will have more room to work rather than being shoehorned into offices and reception counters at the current location.

“We have always performed our own billing internally – it’s a core competency of ours,” Snyder said. “Those individuals are on staff, and having them in the same building creates a real efficiency that’s hard to put into numbers. When a biller has the opportunity to sit down with a physician at the end of the day and compare notes, the end product is better than billers that are working from home and trying to communicate with physicians.

The Innovation Drive location also offers ample surface-lot parking; parking at the downtown building has long been challenging. OB-GYN Associates first day of operation at its new location is Monday, March 11.

OB-GYN Associates move across town will be nothing short of a Herculean effort

Doctors at OB-GYN Associates will see their last patients at their longtime Arlington Avenue location on Thursday, March 7. The practice will close that night, and staff will spend Friday and the weekend moving into and setting up the new facility. Monday, March 11 will be business as usual for OB-GYN Associates at its new location at 635 Innovation Drive on the campus of Northern Nevada Sierra Medical Center.

“The thing about babies, they come when they are ready to come; there’s no stopping the flow,” OB-GYN Associates Executive Director Jeff Snyder said. “It’s not like we can close for two weeks. There’s no real way we can shut down due to patient care reasons.

“One of our requirements was proximity to a hospital that has labor and delivery,” Snyder added. “The ability to walk across the street and check on our patients is very helpful.

After the first truck is loaded and delivered, half the practice’s staff will stay at the new location and start setting up exam offices and equipment, while the other half returns to continue with the move-out.

The move brings both excitement and anxiety, Snyder said. Some doctors at OB-GYN Associates have spent their entire careers in the downtown location.

“In the end, given the amount of space we are taking, there’s a lot of excitement,” Snyder said. “The cool thing is that the obstetrician community here is very collaborative. Physicians in the community have reached out and asked us how they can help and what we need during this time. It’s great to see because in the end it’s the patients who benefit.”