Category: Business

Seven Oaks Pet Depot & Hospital Offers Vast Selection For Your Pets

7OaksPet — Dr. Sree Reddy, DVM (with scissors) cuts the ribbon at the Seven Oaks Pet Depot & Hospital opening. on S.R. 56.

I have known Sree Reddy, DVM (Doctor of Veterinary Medicine) since he first opened his Seven Oaks Pet Hospital on S.R. 56 almost ten years ago (in 2007).

Today, Dr. Reddy and his team are proud to call the new Seven Oaks Pet Depot & Hospital, in what is being called the Pet & Fit Center, also on S.R. 56 (next to Buffalo Wild Wings, about 1/2-mile west of the former location), their new home.

“It has been a dream of mine to own my own building (he actually owns both buildings in the Pet & Fit Center; more on that below), and have both a full-service pet hospital (exotic pets welcome, too) and a fully-stocked pet store in one location,” Dr. Reddy says. “We designed this much larger new space in order to provide the best possible service and prices at both our pet hospital and our pet supplies retail store.”

Dr. Reddy graduated from the College of Veterinary Medicine in Hyderabad, in his native India, before earning his Master’s degree in Veterinary Microbiology from Tuskegee University in Tuskegee, AL. The Lutz resident worked as a veterinarian in Iowa and Clearwater prior to opening his practice in Seven Oaks.

In addition to Dr. Reddy, there are two other veterinarians on staff at Seven Oaks Pet Hospital. Lisa Clifford, DVM, earned a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree in Zoology from the University of Hawaii in Manoa in 1998 and her DVM degree from the Iowa State University College of Veterinary Medicine in Ames in 2005. She’s been on staff at Seven Oaks Pet Hospital since 2009.

Dr. Teresa Kho, DVM, received her Bachelor’s degree in Biology and attended veterinary school at Ross University. in North Brunswick, NJ. She was born in Hawaii, raised in California and moved to Florida in May of 2015. Dr. Kho enjoys all animals, but is particularly interested in seeing exotic pets and focusing on preventive care.

The new pet hospital occupies about 5,000 sq. ft., and the retail store occupies another 3,000 sq. ft. in the building closer to S.R. 56 on the 2.4-acre site.

Dr. Reddy says the new location also has allowed him to expand Seven Oaks Pet Hospital’s on-site grooming and boarding for its clients.

Also located in the front building is the 2,400-sq.-ft. Hammerfist Krav Maga, while CrossFit gym now occupies the 12,500-sq.-ft. second building in the plaza. Both businesses came from the same plaza where the pet hospital used to be located.

A Truly Caring, High-Tech Veterinary Office

One reason clients are so pleased with their experience is that Dr. Reddy’s practice stays ahead of the curve with new technology and treatment options. “We are proud that we update our practice with two or three new services every year,” says Dr. Reddy. For example, Seven Oaks Pet Hospital recently added an underwater treadmill. “This is great for doing rehab with older dogs to build muscle, while taking weight off the joints,” Dr. Reddy says.

And, for many years now, Dr. Reddy says, Seven Oaks Pet Hospital has been the only animal hospital in Florida to do single-port (incision) laparoscopic surgeries, such as spays for animals who weigh more than 10 pounds, liver biopsies or gastropexy (to eliminate twisting of the stomach). Dr. Reddy says that, while some facilities offer these services with multiple incisions, his office is the only ones in the state that uses a single port. And, he performs all of these surgeries on-site himself. Dr. Reddy says he learned to do these surgeries through specialized training in 2005 at the International Veterinary Acupuncture Society in Ft. Collins, CO. “I’ve done hundreds of these surgeries and it really has helped a lot of pets,” he says.

The single port laparoscopic spay is just one reason why (as we reported a year or so ago in these pages) Mary Groezinger, a volunteer with Labrador Retriever Rescue of Florida, raves about Seven Oaks Pet Hospital.

Mary also also said she was grateful for Dr. Reddy’s support of the Labrador Rescue. He provides dozens of discounted laparoscopic spays for the organization every year.

On a personal note, although I haven’t had a dog of my own for about five years, Dr. Reddy helped me and my son so much when we had to put our golden retriever Goldie down. You can just tell when someone loves your pet as much as you do. And, Dr. Reddy and his staff all seem to have that quality.

Dr. Reddy says he also is one of very few local animal clinics combining traditional and holistic treatments.

“Traditional and holistic treatments actually complement each other,” says Dr. Reddy, who also offers laser therapy for pets. For example, if a pet has an issue with one of its knees, the laser is applied right to the knee for a targeted approach, instead of using an oral anti-inflammatory medicine. The laser can be used for hip dysplasia, knee pain and to reduce post-operative pain, as well as for dental extractions.

He also says veterinary medicine is changing because clients want to know exactly what’s wrong with their pet, not just how to treat their symptoms. So, Seven Oaks Pet Hospital can do all diagnostics in office, from X-rays to ultrasounds.

Also popular are dental cleanings with no anaesthesia. “I enjoy it, because I like helping the pets,” he says. “And, we want to minimize the risks of anaesthesia.”

Seven Oaks Pet Hospital also offers wellness plans. Dr. Reddy says the plans are “a success story for us,” because his staff audits the plans and finds that most clients save anywhere from $100 to $2,000 annually by choosing a wellness plan. Wellness plan members get unlimited free exams, plus vaccines, (an annual) heartworm test and more. The wellness plan also entitles the pet to a reduced co-pay at an after-hours emergency facility. Different plans are available for puppies and kittens and for adult pets. “And, if the plan doesn’t save you money, we’ll tell you not to renew it.”

Your Pet Store…Your Way

Dr. Reddy says the Seven Oaks Pet Depot store absolutely does compete with the pet superstores for selection and price.

From the popular Blue Buffalo and Royal Canin foods to Greenies natural treats to the huge selection of pet toys, Dr. Reddy says the inventory at the store will evolve with the needs of the community. “If a client prefers a certain type of food, we can get it for them,” he says. “We’ve already added many requested items, so if you don’t see what you want when you’re in the store, tell us and we’ll get it for you and start stocking it.”

Seven Oaks Pet Hospital is located at 27029 S.R. 56 (look for the big, inflatable dalmation). Call 973-4779 or visit SevenOaksPetDepot.com for more info.

Dr. Reddy also is a partner at North Tampa Pet Depot (16033 Tampa Palms Blvd.). For info, call 866-7387 or visit NorthTampaPetDepot.com.

WCNT-tv Episode 4 Is Just A Heartbeat Away

WCCC Still Cutting Ribbons!

Just when yours truly thought that the summer was a slower time for the Greater Wesley Chapel Chamber of Commerce (WCCC), I realized how wrong I was.

Since our last issue, there have been eight well-attended WCCC ribbon-cutting and other free events to keep the local businesses hosting these events happy, even in the 100° heat of late June and early July.

Here’s a listing of a few of the events you may have missed:

Señor T’s

LA Fitness Tampa Palms (6/25)

Seven Oaks Pet Depot & Hospital (also 6/25)

Buttermilk Provisions (July 6)

Bay Dermatology (7/15)

Pasco Education Foundation (7/21)

Try 7 Layers Bakery!

If you haven’t yet tried the new 7 Layers Bakery (26306 Wesley Chapel Blvd., or S.R. 54) in the Grand Oaks Plaza in Lutz since we told you about it opening a few months ago, check out the picture and tell me you don’t want to try this true, New York-style bakery owned by Evelyn Barrero and William Moreno. Pictured are the new amaretto cupcake, my favorite peanut butter cup cupcake, a hand-piped cannoli, the new chocolate eclair, my new favorite creme brulée cupcake and the bakery’s signature 7-layer cookies. Call 388-2271 or see pg. 37 for info.

New Tampa Pediatric & Adolescent Care’s Dr. Rita Dubey Promises Excellent Care

For Dr. Rita Dubey (pronounced “Doo-bay”), the best part of being a pediatrician is not just that she gets to care for sick children or advise families about how to help keep their kids healthy — although she says she loves that part of her job. The best part, she says, is watching them metamorphose from newborn infants to toddlers to teens and beyond.

“The best part of pediatrics is the evolution that we see,” says Dr. Dubey, who is the owner and sole physician at New Tampa Pediatrics and Adolescent Care located the Seven Oaks Professional Park (west of Sam’s Club), off S.R. 56. “It’s so interesting to see the patients blossom and grow, their development and growth.”

Dr. Dubey has practiced medicine for more than three decades. She received her Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS, equivalent to the MD) degree from Mumbai University in Mumbai, India, in 1982.

She completed her residency in pediatrics at the Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital in Nashville, TN, in 1991, and practiced at East Tennessee Children’s Hospital in Knoxville until she moved to Tampa in January 1999.

After moving here, she worked for the Health Point Pediatric Group in Tampa and the Pediatric Health Care Alliance in Riverview before deciding to set up her own practice.

With two young children who were then ages 4 and 7 and attending local schools, Dr. Dubey and her husband Rajiv (who is the chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of South Florida) settled in Tampa Palms. Taking measure of the rapid growth north of where they lived, Dr. Dubey decided to open her own practice in Wesley Chapel in October 2006.

Over the past decade, she has seen patients from newborns upwards — “Once they leave home, they leave me!,” she says — and her services run the gamut of traditional pediatric care.

Dr. Dubey says she often “meets” a patient when they are still in utero and the parent comes by for a visit to see if this is the office they want for their family. Once the baby becomes a patient, Dr. Dubey carries out the gamut of periodic well care visits based on the timeline set by the American Association of Pediatrics. She checks growth and development, making sure the children meet their milestones, and offers counseling, behavior, safety and well-care visits.

Patients also can get sports physicals, as well as school and camp physicals.

Because Dr. Dubey is the only physician on staff, she sees all of the patients herself and knows all of their families and their concerns personally. She is almost always able to see patients the same day they call because the office keeps half the day open to see sick children and the other half for well care and physicals. Basic lab tests also are performed at the office.

For Wesley Chapel resident Liz Crew, New Tampa Pediatric & Adolescent Care was worth the drive from Brooksville, where she lived at the time when her older daughter, now 10, was born.

That daughter was Dr. Dubey’s third Crew family patient. She says he two younger daughters (now ages 4 and 7) have been Dr. Dubey’s patients all along.

Crew also has referred other friends and family members to the practice.

“We really love the practice,” says Crew. “We love Dr. Dubey. The staff is always courteous and on top of things. There’s never been a time that I’ve made an after-hour call and not received a call back. Dr. Dubey is very personable and likes to know what’s going on in life, in school and with extra-curricular activities. She recognizes if kids are apprehensive and has a good bedside manner.”

Dr. Dubey says she believes medicine was a natural fit for her after she became interested in the sciences as a teen. Once she started medical school, she says she was drawn to pediatrics because of the positive impacts she could have on young lives.

She says she also loves the fact that the follow-through is so much better with children than with adults, noting that while grownups will frequently disregard doctors’ advice about health and habits, when it comes to their children, they are so careful and will go the extra mile for their health.

Keeping Up With Trends

Having been in practice so long, Dr. Dubey is ideally positioned to observe trends in children’s health. One is the issue of childhood obesity, the rise of which she has certainly noted.

“With every other child, we have to talk about weight management,” she says.

So many children suffer from being anywhere from mildly overweight to obese that a regular part of Dr. Dubey’s practice has become to find resources to get children back into good health with healthy food and proper exercise.

She says that moving away from a sedentary lifestyle and eating so many processed foods are the keys to curbing the increase in early onset diabetes and high cholesterol in so many children.

“Another disturbing trend is the practice of questioning immunizations,” says Dr. Dubey. Over the past decade, she has had an increase of parents coming to her concerned about information they have gathered from the internet about the dangers of immunization, Widely publicized — and yet, thoroughly discredited studies — linking vaccinations to autism are one reason for parents refusing vaccinations. Other reasons include a belief that vaccination schedules are the result of drug companies pushing for profits, or fear mongering from the medical community.

Dr. Dubey tells parents that the vaccinations prevent illnesses that have caused devastation in the past, and she is worried about pockets of illnesses now breaking out when people refuse to vaccinate their kids.

Anxiety amongst teens is another issue commonly in the news, and Dr. Dubey says it has always been there, but parents are acknowledging and addressing it more nowadays. She says parents also are more aware, informed and wary about overmedicating children. The overuse of antibiotics and resulting resistance is an issue with which many parents have become familiar. She adds that today’s parents are more amenable to suggestions to observe their children and give nature a chance. If problems persists, they are encouraged to bring the child back.

New Tampa Pediatric & Adolescent Care is open Monday-Friday, 8 a.m.-5 p.m., but Dr. Dubey also takes after-hours calls. The office accepts most private insurance plans, as well as Medicaid.

“We strive to provide competent and compassionate care,” says Dr. Dubey. “Our staff knows that our patients come first.”

New Tampa Pediatric & Adolescent Care is located at 2236 Ashley Oaks Cir. in Wesley Chapel. For more information, see the ad on page 42 of our current issue or, to make an appointment, call 973-2500.

Fast Track Urgent Care — Bridging The Gap Between Your Doctor & The ER

If you’re sick or injured and can’t be seen by your primary care doctor right away, urgent care facilities offer a convenient alternative. Much less expensive than a visit to the emergency room, and with expanded hours when compared with a typical doctor’s office, it’s no wonder urgent care facilities are popular with people in need of medical care all over the U.S.

One urgent care facility in Wesley Chapel takes its role in helping meet the healthcare needs of the community to the next level.

Fast Track Urgent Care Center, located just off of S.R. 54 west of I-75, calls itself a “boutique” urgent care facility, because it offers not only a personal touch, but also expanded services that can make the inconvenience of a sudden illness or an unexpected injury a little easier to deal with.

For example, the center offers what it calls “Fast Pass,” an online check-in system. Although appointments are not required, patients can fill out their paperwork in advance and skip the line when they arrive at the urgent care facility.

“Our goal is to get you in and out within 30-60 minutes,” says Paul Nanda, M.D., who is the medical director for Fast Track’s four locations, including Wesley Chapel, South Tampa, Westchase, and Carrollwood. “We know you didn’t wake up that morning with plans to go to urgent care, so we want to make you better and get you back to your life as soon as possible.”

Dr. Nanda says Fast Track also offers free home delivery of medications. “If you’re not feeling well and have a fever, we know you don’t want to wait in line at the pharmacy,” he explains. “So, after your appointment, you can go home and we’ll bring your prescriptions to you within two hours.”

He adds, “We also handle all referrals in-house, so we actually make the phone call, ensure that the facility we refer you to will take your insurance, and set up the follow-up appointment for you,” says Dr. Nanda. “We help you navigate the healthcare system. And, we don’t just tell you to follow up with your primary doctor if you don’t feel better in a few days. We tell you to come back to us. We’re a boutique facility, so we give a higher level of care.”

Medical Staff

The staff at Fast Track includes a dozen Board-certified physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants. The team of experienced professionals rotate among the company’s four locations.

Fast Track Urgent Care Center was founded in 2005 by Tampa native Daron G. Diecidue, M.D., who is Board-certified in Family Medicine. Dr. Diecidue holds Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degrees in both Biology and Psychology from Florida State University in Tallahassee, and a degree in Chemistry from the University of South Florida in Tampa. He received his M.D. degree from the University of South Florida School of Medicine and performed his residency in family medicine at Bayfront Medical Center in St. Petersburg. He is an active member of the American Academy of Family Practice, the Florida Medical Association and the Urgent Care Association of America.

Meanwhile, Dr. Nanda has served as medical director of Fast Track Urgent Care since 2013. He also is Board-certified in Family Medicine. Dr. Nanda received a B.S. degree in Biology from Indiana University in Bloomington in 1996, and a Master of Science (M.S.) degree in Immunology from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis in 1999, and his M.D. degree from the American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine in St. Maarten in 2003. He completed his residency at Ohio State University in Columbus in 2007.

Dr. Nanda also interviewed for a residency at Bayfront Hospital in St. Petersburg. At that time, he says he, “fell in love with Tampa” and was hoping to find an opportunity to work in the area. When the opportunity arose to work with Fast Track Urgent Care Clinic, he says he jumped at the chance.

“I really like the office and its philosophy of how to treat patients,” Dr. Nanda says. “When I interviewed with Dr. Diecidue, the CEO, I found that he is doing things the way I would do them if I owned my own practice.”

Dr. Nanda was hired in 2013 and was quickly promoted to medical director. He says he is, “responsible for ensuring the practice consistently offers patient-oriented, evidence-based, cost-effective care” at Fast Track’s four locations, including the Wesley Chapel center.

“I was always taught that patients come first,” explains Dr. Nanda. “As providers, we are advocates who do what’s best for the patient. Sometimes that means we have to fight with insurance companies. Sometimes that means we don’t randomly prescribe antibiotics. Sometimes that means we help people navigate the healthcare system, which has become more and more confusing. We hire providers who agree with our patient-first philosophy, and we ask them to treat every patient like they would treat their own mom or child.”

For a complete list of the medical providers at the Wesley Chapel office, go to FastTrackUrgentCare.com.

Newest Location: Wesley Chapel

The Wesley Chapel office opened in February of this year. The location was previously a different urgent care center, so Fast Track Urgent Care was able to move in quickly when that location became available.

“We were looking to get into this area because it’s exciting — and growing — and there was a lack of really good urgent care facilities,” says Dr. Nanda.

He says the practice treats most conditions that a traditional family practice would treat, but without the wait times that can be associated with a primary care physician in today’s healthcare environment. He explains that Fast Track’s doctors don’t handle long-term management of a chronic condition, such as high blood pressure or depression, but when you’re sick or injured, that’s the time to come to the center.

“We treat everyone from infant to geriatric,” says Dr. Nanda. “The youngest patient I’ve ever treated in urgent care was two days old, and the oldest was 103,” although the clinic currently does not treat infants under three months old.

“For young, healthy people with no chronic conditions, in some cases we actually function as a primary care doctor,” says Dr. Nanda. “We’re not trying to take the place of a primary care physician, but you can come and see us whenever you’re sick or injured. We’re open 84 hours a week (12 hours a day, Sunday-Saturday), and we’re here to serve you and your medical needs. We make it as quick and easy as possible, and we take care of our patients with extra care services.”

He says another important role that the Wesley Chapel Fast Track Urgent Care Center plays is to give people an alternative to visiting the emergency room when they find themselves sick or injured, and their doctor’s office is either booked or closed.

“Healthcare is getting more and more expensive,” Dr. Nanda says. “While a typical emergency room visit can cost thousands of dollars (with no insurance), our average visit is just $125. We want to keep people out of the ER and get them feeling better.”

And, people do seem to be taking notice. On the center’s website, dozens of five-star reviews highlight what people love about Fast Track Urgent Care Center.

“Very quick, and attentive staff all around,” writes John P. “Best urgent care experience I’ve ever had.”

And, patient Carmen L. writes, “Fast Track is always the place I choose when I can’t get in to my own doctor. They always give exceptional service. I truly recommend Fast Track for your urgent care needs.”

Fast Track Urgent Care Center has four locations throughout the Tampa Bay area. The Wesley Chapel office is located at 5504 Gateway Blvd. and is open seven days a week, 8 a.m. – 8 p.m. To make a reservation with Fast Pass or for more information, go to FastTrackUrgentCare.com or call 925-1903.