An urgent care clinic and other medical services are planned for Richland’s Horn Rapids residential neighborhood.
A pair of physicians employed by Kadlec Regional Medical Center will privately develop the 1.5-acre property on the north side of Clubhouse Lane into a medical complex under terms of a deal pending with the city of Richland.
Drs. Luay Ailabouni, a surgeon, and Elhami N. Hannan, a nephrologist, submitted a letter of intent offering the city $300,000 for the site, signaling their plans to build a strip mall with an urgent care clinic and offices for additional medical professionals.
The city’s economic development committee recommended the city council authorize the manager to enter a formal purchase and sale agreement with the doctors’ business, LEMA Group LLC. The doctors could not be reached to discuss their vision.
The city council is expected to consider the recommendation when it meets Nov. 15. The doctors indicated they will begin developing the vacant site, which fronts Highway 240, within six months of closing the land purchase.
Ailabouni and Hannan will construct an 18,860-square-foot strip mall, according to plans supplied to the city.
Courtesy city of Richland
The project will house an urgent care clinic, counseling offices, a primary care clinic, a pharmacy and offer additional space to unspecified tenants. When it opens, the Horn Rapids urgent care clinic will join about a dozen dedicated urgent care clinics in Kennewick, Pasco and Richland.
Ailabouni and Hannan estimate up to 20 people will work in the complex when it is built and occupied.
CMS Builders will construct the project, which will be privately financed.
The urgent care clinic will be the first in the Horn Rapids area, which has gained population as apartments and residential development take hold.
They are also the latest team of doctors to venture into the urgent care industry. Dr. Prabhjot “Jyoti” Kahlon, an emergency room doctor, and her husband, Dr. Janmeet “Rocky” Sahota, a neck and spine surgeon, opened Health First Urgent Care at Columbia Point in Richland in 2020 and more recently, at the former Cousin’s Restaurant on Road 68 in Pasco in 2022.
Urgent care clinics provide a wide range of services that fall short of treating emergency and life-threatening conditions. In general, they provide general diagnostic services for ordinary medical conditions and lesser trauma such as broken bones as well as X-ray services and lab services.
Patients with life threatening conditions such as stroke, heart attack or grave injuries should seek help in emergency rooms.
Ibis World, a business research firm, reports urgent care is a $45.6 billion industry in the U.S. and gaining market share. There are nearly 10,000 urgent care clinics in the U.S. that collectively employ more than 215,000 people, it said.