Drakos Urgent Care plans expansion to Camillus

CAMILLUS — Not quite two years after opening its first location, Drakos Urgent Care will open its third urgent-care center later this year in Camillus. Parent company Drakos Clinical Dynamics first opened its pediatric urgent care in the town of Clay in May 2023, followed by a general urgent-care center in Cicero earlier this year. The company’s explosive growth isn’t surprising, according to Drakos CEO Heather Drake Bianchi. “There’s a huge shortage in accessibility,” she says. That includes a lack of enough primary care doctors and a shortage in hospital capacity. Urgent-care centers help bridge that gap. Before founding Drakos, Drake Bianchi was part of CineMedics, a set medical support company serving the entertainment industry. During the pandemic, CineMedics provided on-set medical support on movie sets around the country and the world. When the pandemic ended, after years of sleeping in hotel rooms, Drake Bianchi and others in the business were ready to head home to Central New York, she says. They decided to put their skills as first responders and medical professionals to use, combined with what they had learned during their travels. “We saw a lot of different ideas on how other cities and other states and other countries do things,” she says. They combined many of those ideas, with their foundation in mobile medical services, to open Drakos Pediatric Urgent Care. The facility sees patients up to age 21. It wasn’t long before the parents of their young patients were asking for a location of their own, Drake Bianchi recalls. That led to Drakos opening the Cicero location, which sees patients of all ages. “As far as Camillus goes, residents out there kept calling and asking,” she says. After doing their due diligence, Drakos decided to go ahead with a third location, selecting a 5,000-square-foot site at 5301 Genesee St., in the Camillus Commons Plaza. The space was once home to a Bon Ton department store. “We were very deliberate about picking that spot,” Drake Bianchi says. A Camillus native, she says the location was appealing because it’s central to everything. Granite Real Estate Group is handling the provision of design and construction services. Work on the site has begun, and Drake Bianchi is hopeful for a late 2024 opening. Drakos is working with Tompkins Community Bank on financing. To support the new location, Drakos is currently looking to hire about 40 people to fill positions including EMTs, physicians, nurse practitioners, physician associates, X-ray technicians, and front-desk staff. “We’re planning to bring the same good level of care to the Camillus area,” Drake Bianchi says. Drakos prides itself on doing things a little bit differently, she adds. That starts with treating the whole patient — not just one illness or symptom. The biggest difference may be accessibility. Understanding that illness and injuries don’t always happen at convenient times, the company’s urgent-care locations are open starting at 6:30 a.m. and stay open as late as 10 p.m. every day. That’s seven days a week, 365 days per year. Services include anything from back-to-school vaccinations and physicals to acute care such as splinting or suturing. “We also have a complete lab on site as well as mobile X-ray,” Drake Bianchi says. Once open and fully staffed, Drakos will employ about 120 people across the three offices. More locations could be on the horizon, once the dust settles from opening three urgent-care centers back-to-back, she says. While the firm has focused initially on the greater Syracuse area, as that’s where the company’s founders are all from, it could also pursue other areas like the Utica–Rome region. “Our goal is to bridge the gap where there is a lack of health care,” says Drake Bianchi..