Alan Dennington, a board certified emergency physician, and his wife Kristina, also an emergency room physician, founded Better Faster Urgent Care in Southlake in 2013. The Denningtons, who have been Southlake residents for five years, saw a need for an urgent care facility in the area. “Southlake is a great community, and the people that live here care about their healthcare,” Dr. Dennington said. “They are knowledgeable and involved, and as a physician, you appreciate when people participate in their own care.”
Dr. Dennington developed Better Faster Urgent Care to be a next generation urgent care provider, or what he terms Urgent Care Plus. “We felt there was a need for affordable care for urgent problems that was local and easy to access, yet comprehensive in its abilities,” Dr. Dennington said. “There are many stand-alone emergency rooms popping up that look like urgent cares, but charge at emergency room prices.
“We take care of a wide variety of problems and complex injuries, but at an urgent care designation, which saves the patient money. Overall, we don’t have to send people to the ER often like other urgent care centers do, because we are staffed and equipped to handle most problems, yet we don’t charge as an emergency room.”
Better Faster has all of the capabilities of other urgent care centers, but offer an extended array of services including extended laboratory, IV fluids, IV antibiotics, and mild sedation for procedures that aren’t offered at other area urgent care clinics. They are equipped with x-ray capabilities, like many urgent care centers, however they also have an extended laboratory and procedural capabilities.
The extended laboratory services allow for the evaluation of a much broader range of complaints including abdominal pain and low-risk chest pain. Additionally, Better Faster offers a variety of mild sedation options for procedures to ease fear of needles, improve patient comfort, and make for a better experience for patients requiring otherwise painful procedures.
Not only is the facility state of the art, but the providers are topnotch as well. Emergency medicine involves a broad training in all aspects of medicine including orthopedics, pediatrics, intensive care, internal medicine, surgery and gynecology with a special emphasis on taking care of patients with acute injury and illness. “Although we are an urgent care center,” Dr. Dennington said, “the staff here are the same type of people you would see if you had to go to an emergency room. With the level of training and experience in emergency medicine the physicians and staff have, they are more highly focused on taking care of people who are sick.”
“Health is something we often take for granted until we no longer have it,” Dr. Dennington said. “When we become sick or are injured, we want to get better right away. We all have fast-paced, busy lives, and can’t afford to be laid up sick for several days. Our facility provides treatment on your schedule.”
