Business Profile: Forme Medical Center and Urgent Care, White Plains
Port Chester resident Gina Cappelli and White Plains resident Maria Alba-Trusa each have decades of experience working in the health care field.
The duo is using their backgrounds to provide health care to as many local residents as possible through their co-ownership of Forme Medical Center and Urgent Care in White Plains, which opened in April 2014. Cappelli, who had owned two physical therapy facilities before opening Forme, is the business’ president and founder and Alba-Trusa is partner and CEO.
“Forme Medical Center and Urgent Care is all under one roof medical care,” Cappelli said last week. Some of the in-house services the medical center offers are primary care, urgent care, physical therapy, podiatry, obstetrics and neurology. Through the membership system Forme also get discounts for patients who cannot receive treatment at the medical center, as well as prescription drugs at reduced costs.” They have advocates with us,” Alba-Trusa said.
The second part of the business is Transforme MD, which provides such aesthetic services as lasers, facials and Botox. “One side’s health, the other side’s beauty,” Cappelli said.
Both the insured and the uninsured can become Forme members.
Alba-Trusa, who came to Forme to become co-owner in 2015 said, “We joined forces and we decided to expand the medical center into the different specialties. The aesthetics center was created about two years ago. The idea was that the aesthetic center would help us support in a way the mission of the medical center,” she said. “Our mission is to help the uninsured community. Nobody’s focusing energy on the uninsured community,”
The uninsured include the self-employed, young adults getting off their parent’s insurance as they become older and cannot afford to purchase insurance and the Latino immigrant community both documented and undocumented, Alba-Trusa said.
Cappelli said more than 27 million Americans do not have health insurance. “This population is not even getting preventive care because it’s too costly. So what happens? They wait until they’re very sick,” she said. “But through Forme, this population has access to care now. They can come in for as low as $30 a month and get access to the urgent care, unlimited,” she said. “For $60 you get access to urgent care, plus primary care.” Forme members also get tests at much lower costs than they could get on their own, Cappelli said.
“The whole system is broken. Everything is inflated,” Cappelli said. “People can’t afford to even go to the hospital.”
Alba-Trusa said she and her partner jokingly refer to themselves as rebels in the health care field “I’ve been in health care for 35 years,” she said. “I know the ins and outs of the system. And Gin has been in (health care) for 20 years.”
“We are finding solutions because we’re focused on the solutions. We are not focused on the problem,” Alba-Trusa said. “We don’t care what anybody says. We just go and do things our way.”
“We have found our purpose,” Cappelli said.
Forme Medical Center and Urgent Care is located at 7-11 S. Broadway, on the first floor, in White Plains. For more information call 914-723-4900 or visit http://formemedicalcenter.com/.Forme is also on several social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.
