A reception area inside Carbon Health.
California-based health care company Carbon Health opened an urgent care clinic in Federal Way last month, marking its fourth clinic to open in the Puget Sound region since summer 2022.
Carbon Health opened in Federal Way on Nov. 27. That followed three others that opened last year in Puyallup, Mill Creek, and Lynnwood, the latter where Carbon Health made its Washington state debut.
Founded in 2015, Carbon Health now operates in 12 states, according to Rosie Martinson, who’s based in Tacoma and is the company’s director of talent acquisition and employer brand. No other Washington locations are currently planned, she said.
“Our mission is making health care accessible — and to do that, we need to go to where people are and also expand services outside of the hospital,” Martinson said of giving patients more cost-effective and timely service for conditions that don’t require a hospital emergency room visit.
A Carbon Health exam room.
Carbon Health’s Washington clinics primarily offer in-person urgent care, including walk-in and scheduled appointments, and virtual urgent care by appointment. Depending on one’s employer and insurance, virtual primary care also is available.
Conditions routinely treated include cuts, injuries, illnesses, infections, and the like — non-life-threating conditions. Carbon Health also provides X-rays, Department of Transportation physicals, and drug testing.
Each clinic in the region is staffed with nine to 10 people, including a clinic manager, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, and X-ray technologists. Dr. Howard Willson is senior clinic medical director overseeing the four clinics, Martinson said.
“We have supervising physicians that are always on call and ready to support our advanced practice providers that are those NPs and PAs,” she said.
National and state Carbon Health officials who met for a team dinner in October are, from left, Dr. Roger Wu, national medical director; Rosie Martinson, director of talent acquisition and employer brand; Nichole Creech, clinic manager, Federal Way; Judy Vance, clinic manager, Lynnwood; Kaiya Hunsaker, clinic manager, Mill Creek; Nilbe Castro, area manager; Amber Valenzuela, clinic manager, Puyallup; and Dr. Howard Willson, senior clinic medical director for Washington’s four clinics.
Based in Oakland, California, Carbon Health was co-founded by a doctor, Caesar Djavaherian, and an engineer, Eren Bali, aiming to blend the best of both worlds: quality medical care with top technology. Prior to Carbon Health, Djavaherian co-founded Direct Urgent Care to deliver technology-enabled urgent care throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Bali’s past includes founding Udemy, the world’s largest marketplace for online courses, according to company bios on each.
Carbon Health has an app allowing patients to schedule appointments, receive discharge instructions, and more. For provides, artificial intelligence technology chronicles patient visits to free providers from taking notes, allowing more attention for patients. Carbon Health’s AI charting assistant is known as Carby. Carbon Health also has its own electronic health record system.
Carbon Health’s app allows for setting appointments, accessing health records, and more.
“Our technology is what we believe is our differentiator as a company with the app and for the providers and for the patients because it’s all right there in their hand to schedule an appointment, get on the list, checking in, even if they’re walk-ins — they do it all there,” Martinson said. “We’re paperless clinics. Patients get their follow-up care plan in their app, all the communication is through the app, and they can log in on our website, too. But we believe that’s really what’s going to help drive our company forward is our foundation of technology.”
Providers are diagnosing patients, not Carby, Martinson noted.
Carby is simply capturing what’s happening in the exam room, saving the provider time and improving their experience as well as that of the patient, including by allowing providers to move more quickly between rooms and reducing patient wait times, she said.
Carbon Health has been well-received in Washington, and it’s adding providers and training new ones, Martinson said.
In January, Carbon Health will launch its first urgent care fellowship program for providers in its Federal Way and Lynnwood locations. The program will start with two recent physician assistant graduates whom Dr. Willson will mentor over six months to become qualified to care for patients independently and perform minor procedures, Martinson said.
Carbon Health representatives mark the opening of the company’s Lynnwood clinic last year, the first in Washington.
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