A new urgent care clinic plans to open its doors in Mountain View this summer, filling a void left by the closure of the neighborhood’s only primary care clinic last year.

Mountain View Urgent Care will offer comprehensive medical services from the space next to Mountain View Family Dentistry in the Mountain View Plaza, said owner Dr. Jonathan Van Ravenswaay. He hopes to begin seeing patients there by August.

“I’m getting a lot of calls already,” Van Ravenswaay said.

After growing up in Alaska, spending summers commercial fishing in Bristol Bay and graduating from the University of Alaska Anchorage, he said, he completed his medical residency in California and continued to work there. All the while, he kept his eye on Anchorage. When a neighborhood primary care clinic opened by Alaska Regional in December 2016 closed suddenly seven months later, he said, he saw an opportunity to meet a need. When he found the space next to the dentist, he said, he saw an opportunity to act.

“As soon as I could, I flew up and met with the landlord and signed the lease,” he said.

The property’s last tenant was a veterinarian who closed his doors in 2015; years prior, the space was occupied by an Anchorage Neighborhood Health Center clinic. 

Mountain View Urgent Care plans to open seven days a week and accept Medicaid and Medicare, Van Ravenswaay said. He said he hoped the clinic would provide a cost-effective, convenient alternative for some patients who might otherwise have made a trip to the emergency room. Eventually, the doctor said, the clinic hopes to offer everything from x-rays, ultrasounds and telemedicine capabilities to lab services and limited prescription pharmaceuticals.

“We are a family business and will provide a safe, secure, family-friendly health care facility for the community,” Van Ravenswaay wrote in a March 23 letter of introduction to the Mountain View Community Council.

The business hoped to start slow and stick around, he said.

“We’re trying to go for the long haul,” the doctor said.