Rapid Healthcare provides walk-in care in downtown Joliet

People working and living in the downtown Joliet area now have a new option for urgent and primary health care.

Rapid Healthcare, located at 167 N. Chicago St. in Joliet, treats urgent injury and illnesses, manages chronic conditions, provides for routine and preventive health care and accepts most medical insurance, according to the Rapid Healthcare website.

“We take newborns to seniors,” said Dr. Mustafa Aladin of Rapid Healthcare.

Those services are individualized, in line with current medical practices and delivered with compassion, according to Kathleen Wolz, nurse practitioner at Rapid Healthcare.

“We do testing for different viruses, and we can order prescription medicines appropriately,” she said. “We’re actually negotiating with a lab right now to draw labs. Currently, we have weekly ultrasounds and X-rays but depending on the need, we can increase that.”

Wolz said Rapid Healthcare would also like to add some aesthetics services, too, such as “lunchtime botox.”

“We keep adding and expanding services,” she said. “Hopefully patients will see everything we can do.”

Patients who need access to health care but have no insurance or can’t afford care will be guided to other resources that can best serve them, Wolz said.

“If we can’t take them, we will help them find someone else,” she said.

That’s because Wolz, who is also president and board chair of the Will-Grundy Medical Clinic, said the downtown Joliet area has many resources for health care.

In addition to the Will-Grundy Medical Clinic, Joliet also has the Will County Health Department, VNA Health Care and Aunt Martha’s Health & Wellness, which has locations on Joliet’s east and west sides.

Aladin and Wolz simply want patients to receive the care they need.

“One of our goals was working closely with the community,” Aladin said, while meeting health care needs through various projects.

Projects include providing medical exams for drivers of commercial vehicles, Aladin said.

Rapid Healthcare also offers school and sports physicals and vaccines and medical exams for immigrants, he said.

“We’re seeing a fair amount of those,” Aladin said of the medical exams for immigrants. “It all goes back to meeting the need.”

Downtown Joliet location fills need

Aladin and Wolz had previously opened a Rapid Healthcare in Bolingbrook but “the market was saturated” and the need wasn’t there, Wolz said.

And they really wanted to meet the need.

“I think this is what we went to school for,” Aladin said. “We always say we want to help people. Well, we truly do want to help people. We enjoy it, too. We enjoy seeing the outcomes.”

Downtown Joliet is filled with businesses, students and government offices, Wolz said. Any of these people might come to work or school and develop a sore throat, cough or not just feel well, she said.

“Then they have to leave to find and urgent care,” Wolz said.

“We always say we want to help people. Well, we truly do want to help people.”

—  Dr. Mustafa Aladin of Rapid Healthcare

Even patients with a primary care physician often can’t schedule a same-day appointment, Wolz said.

“We can get you in and out quickly,” she said.

Aladin is also the owner of Skin & Body Bar Medical + Wellness Spa in Frankfort and practices at Primary Care Joliet.

Wolz is the co-owner of two primary/urgent care clinics and a comprehensive medical spa, according her biography on the Joliet Region Chamber of Commerce & Industry.

She called Aladin her mentor, a “very empathetic, compassionate and intelligent provider.”

“And I wanted to go into business with somebody like that, someone really responsible. I knew he was committed to healthy outcomes for our patients,” Wolz said.

Aladin feels networking is part of the process in caring for the community and that he strives to “get as much support as we can to be successful so we can stay in business.”

“We had some growing pains and we learned,” Aladin said. “We’re ready to go to the next step now.”

For more information about Rapid Healthcare in Joliet, call 630-518-4444 or visit rapidhealthcare.org.