River City Health & Wellness owner Helen Robertson, left, and head of business operations Kathryn Lerman. (Photos by Abigail Grey)
A gym, a massage therapy practice and a nutrition coach are just some of the offerings that have moved into a new health-and-wellness venue at 2100 N. Hamilton St.
The 4,000-square-foot Scott’s Addition building is now home to River City Health & Wellness, a clinic with a host of different practices housed within it.
The clinic, which opened around a month ago, offers physical therapy, massage therapy, a registered dietitian, direct primary care with a nurse practitioner, access to a gym and is starting pelvic health services in mid-May.
Its target clientele are adults across the athletic spectrum, from beginners to highly competitive athletes.
Robertson works on a patient.
The clinic is led by owner Helen Robertson and head of business operations Kathryn Lerman. Robertson, a longtime physical therapist, started River City Performance Therapy five years ago out of one room in the RVA Performance Training gym at 2522 Hermitage Road.
As she enlarged her staff and began to outgrow the existing space, Robertson said she began wondering if she could work on a longtime dream of a new practice with more health disciplines.
“I’d also had this vision from the time I was in PT school of an integrated healthcare system, where there are multiple disciplines all training under one roof, it’s really collaborative, kind of a one-stop shop,” she said. “There’s so much evidence of the fragmented healthcare system where everyone kind of functions in silos.”
Lerman, who has a personal trainer background, joined Robertson at River City Performance Therapy shortly before the move, and the two began looking for spaces together, settling on the Scott’s Addition building for its proximity to Robertson’s former location, its multiple rooms for their multiple disciplines and what they described as an environment that didn’t seem too typically “sterile medical.”
The clinic has various rooms for its practitioners, including a dietitian’s office, massage therapy room, a sauna and a cold plunge as well as a full-service gym for personal training and physical therapy. River City Performance Therapy is one of the clinic practitioners.
“People can do their workout, do their recovery aspect, and they’ve got their providers all on-site,” Robertson said. “I do think this model’s going to really start taking off. … I know we’re the first ones in Virginia doing all of the things under one roof.”
The clinic has a gym for both personal training and patients’ personal use.
The clinic has a team of eight, including its pelvic health provider who is scheduled to start in May. Robertson said she’s excited to already be adding another discipline to the clinic’s offerings.
River City Health & Wellness is an out-of-network provider, but patients can use a health savings account or a medical flexible spending account for any of its services.
“If they’ve got out-of-network insurances, we provide a super bill and they’re able to be reimbursed through that,” Robertson said.
The clinic offers both a la carte and membership offerings. Pricing includes $200 for an a la carte annual physical for direct primary care, while personal training and massage therapy start at $80 and $140 per session, respectively.
Memberships to the clinic’s range of services start at $125 per month to $350 per month, depending on services. Higher priced memberships come with 24/7 access to the facility’s gym and an annual primary care physical, among other perks.
The clinic offers tours of the space and meetings with its providers before patients spend any money, which Lerman said she hopes can help patients feel more comfortable coming to the space.
“I’ve had healthcare experiences that were not great in the past, and in designing this, we wanted this to be the opposite of that. Super welcoming, comfortable,” Lerman said.
River City Health & Wellness’s space was previously occupied by utility contractor Benchmark.
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