Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Story by Lauren Johnson

Dr. Stewart Roberts saw a need for an urgent care clinic in Troy and decided to expand his company.

“I’ve driven through Troy many times and it always looked like a fantastic town that was booming with growth,” said Roberts, the CEO of Stopwatch Urgent Care. The company began in Auburn in 2010 and, with its new Troy location opening June 22,  will have eight open clinics with three more under construction.

Stopwatch Urgent Care will be located on 1212 US Highway 231 where the old Advanced Auto Parts building used to be. “It looked like a great spot that will really help the community,” Roberts said.

Roberts will be working here at the Troy site for the first few weeks after opening, and afterwards, Dr. Kyle Adams, his chief medical officer, and Andrea Sport, CRNP, will take over.

Before opening his own urgent care, Roberts completed a dual residency with family medicine and emergency medicine. Straight out of residency, he started working for another urgent care where he saw that they were doing everything wrong.

“They were making people wait for two to three hours. It was a high volume clinic and the main complaint was that patients had to wait too long, so that’s when I decided to start my own,” he said.

According to Roberts, Stopwatch Urgent Care’s average time of getting patients in and out was 26.4 minutes last year. He believes his patients’ time is very important as well as their health.

“We want to move people efficiently and in a healthy way. There’s really no reason for people to wait in an urgent care for two to three hours. If that’s happening then our staff is not doing their job,” he said.

Roberts has made it a top priority to value time and not let his patients sit in the waiting room for hours. It is because of this priority that he believes their volumes are some of the highest in the whole state of Alabama.

“Our patient satisfaction scores are some of, if not the, number one satisfaction scores in the state of Alabama per Blue Cross Blue Shield,” Roberts said.

Another thing that sets Stopwatch Urgent Care apart is that they don’t do any family medicine. It is strictly an urgent care, which allows staff to see patients faster. They have moderately complex labs where they can do different tests such as strep tests, flu tests, mono tests, STD tests, urinary track analysis, and right now, tests for COVID-19.

“We have done almost 8,000 COVID tests in Alabama in our seven locations right now,” Roberts said.

“The clinics also offer telemedicine as an option for people who would rather stay home to be treated for a benign illness. Roberts said patients can schedule a telemedicine visit where the patient can see a doctor from the comfort of their own home, which is also covered by their insurance. The clinics also have their own tele-radiologist service.

Most of the staff is either emergency medicine trained or family medicine trained, therefore, they can take care of broken bones, lacerations, set splints, make casts, and refer patients to an appropriate orthopedic if needed.

Before visiting this urgent care, patients can go online to set a time they want to be seen. If they get there by that selected time, a room will already be waiting for them.

“We really pride ourselves on having that commitment to the patient as well as letting them have a great urgent care experience,” Roberts said.

The Troy clinic will be open from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends.