15 Years of Apex Skin: A Mission to Transform Lives

Fifteen years ago, Dr. Jorge Garcia-Zuazaga, MD, MBA, FAAD, FACMS, was a well-respected Mohs surgeon and director at a large academic medical center in Cleveland. By most measures, things were going well. But something kept nagging at him.

“I got frustrated with patients showing up and saying that they waited months to see me,” he recalls. “And I started thinking, there’s gotta be a better way to tackle that access problem.”

That frustration became the seed of Apex Skin, and what grew from it over the next 15 years is a story about more than dermatology.

The Leap

There was no perfect moment. Dr. Garcia-Zuazaga had two young kids at home, a stable career, and every reason to stay put. But the idea of building something different kept pulling at him.

“I remember talking to my wife and telling her, ‘I really think this is what I want to do. I want to create something really special,'” he says. She told him to go for it, and he did.

He started with three people in Concord, Ohio. In the early months, there were days with only five patients. But he kept showing up, kept connecting with providers in the community, and kept delivering on the promise that had driven him to start the practice in the first place: if you need to be seen, we will get you in.

“People call and we tell them, ‘Hey, we can get you in right now. Do you want to come now or tomorrow?'” he says. “That’s how it is for skin cancer too. My patients call in, I tell my staff, ‘Just put them in right now. I’ll do them right now.'”

Word spread. Patients told friends. Providers took notice. And slowly, what started as a one-location dermatology practice grew into something much larger.

Building the Vision

When Apex first opened, it was standard general dermatology: acne, psoriasis, bread-and-butter derm, with Mohs surgery a half a day a week. Aesthetics were barely part of the picture. But Dr. Garcia-Zuazaga had a bigger vision in mind from the start.

“In dermatology, my vision was always a 360 approach to patient care,” he says. “I always hate it when you do one thing in one place, but then you have to go to another office to do something else. For me, it was always a vision of trying to do everything internally.”

That vision took shape gradually and intentionally. Aesthetics developed. Mohs surgery expanded. An in-house dermatopathology laboratory was added, giving patients faster turnaround on biopsy results without the weeks-long wait of an outside lab. Clinical trials came next, a program that allows Apex patients access to medications that are not yet available to the general public.

“We have patients with conditions getting treated with things that are not in the market yet,” he says. “We were in the paper. We wrote the paper. It’s really cool to be recognized for this research in the world.”

The People Behind It

Expansion brought new challenges, and Dr. Garcia-Zuazaga is candid about the learning curve of growing a practice. At a certain point, he realized that doing it right meant building the right structure around him.

“I’m a Mohs surgeon. I want to be able to do Mohs surgery and treat skin cancer. I’m not an accountant,” he says. Assembling the right management team, developing leaders, getting the right people in the right seats has been an ongoing and essential part of the work.

What he’s most proud of: three members of the original Concord team are still with Apex today, 15 years later, and they’ve grown with it.

“That doesn’t happen by accident,” he says. “We’ve created a really good culture, built the right reputation and foundation for those people to stay and really grow their careers.”

With its newest location in Alliance opening August 25th,  Apex now has 15 locations, more than 50 providers, and has seen over one million patients.

100,000 Skin Cancers Treated

The number that stops Dr. Garcia-Zuazaga in his tracks isn’t the number of locations or providers. It’s this: Apex has diagnosed and treated over 100,000 skin cancers.

“When you start looking at numbers like that, they’re huge,” he says. “It tells you how much impact we’re having in the community.”

For him, it also validates the original mission. Patients dealing with a skin cancer diagnosis want to go somewhere with experience, somewhere that’s done this before and done it well.

“Mohs surgery is our craft,” he says. “If you see our Mohs surgeons, they’re fellowship trained and do thousands of these surgeries a year. You want to go to a specialist that really knows what they’re doing.”

Dr. Garcia-Zuazaga knows this firsthand. A month ago, he had Mohs surgery himself, a basal cell on his forehead, caught and treated at the Westlake office.

“I am a patient too,” he says simply.

Giving Back: Melanoma Monday and the Purple Heart Project

Two programs define the community side of what Apex has built.

Melanoma Monday takes place on the first Monday of May every year. Every Apex location opens its doors for free skin cancer screenings, providers donate their time, and hundreds of patients are seen. Each year, at least 10 to 20 skin cancers are caught during those screenings, some in people who had never considered seeing a dermatologist before.

“Some people don’t have insurance. They may have a concerning mark, and sometimes you can reassure them that it is nothing,” Dr. Garcia-Zuazaga says. “And sometimes we catch people who’ve had a spot for a year that is actually something concerning.”

The Purple Heart Project grew out of Dr. Garcia-Zuazaga’s military background and a desire to pair community service with dermatology. Inspired by efforts to help burn victims after the Boston Marathon bombing, he started offering free scar treatment to veterans: laser revision, whatever could be done to help someone feel more like themselves again and get back into the workforce.

“If I can do my part and help treat some of those scars, maybe they’ll be able to get back into the game and feel better about themselves,” he says. The program has since grown beyond scar treatment, with ambitions to become a broader resource for veterans seeking careers in healthcare and to partner with VFWs and VA facilities for skin cancer screenings.

What Patients Say

The reviews that come in every day are, for Dr. Garcia-Zuazaga, a reflection of everyone at Apex, not just the providers.

“The visit starts with the front desk, and the MA that works with them, and the person who’s checking them out,” he says. “There are so many people behind the scenes making it work, and I’m so appreciative of our team.”

One recent patient review captured it simply: “I have had psoriasis for over 45 years. No doctor has ever helped me as much as Dr. Hyman at Apex. He helped me get what I needed after being denied by my insurance. This has been life changing. I have nothing but the highest praise for Apex and their doctors!”

Another patient, who moved to Hudson from California in 2019, put it this way: “A routine skin check at Apex found a melanoma that Dr. Garcia removed with clear margins. I thank the stars for putting Apex and Dr. Garcia in my life just when I needed it.”

Those moments, a patient who came in worried and left with a plan, a cancer caught early, a veteran with a scar that no longer tells the whole story, are what Dr. Garcia-Zuazaga calls being “the rock stars of dermatology.”

“When people come to our office, they are nervous. Maybe they have cancer. Maybe they have psoriasis and they’re self-conscious, depressed. They come into our office, that’s our stage,” he says. “And when they come out of there, they come out cancer-free or with a treatment plan, understanding, ‘This is what we’re going to do.’”

Looking Ahead: Apex 2.0

At 15 years of Apex, Dr. Garcia-Zuazaga is already thinking about the next 15. The Hudson location is expanding to 10,000 square feet of medical, aesthetic, and surgical space. A new presence in the Alliance area is coming. AI and teledermatology are being explored as tools to improve quality time with patients, not replace it.

The mission, though, hasn’t changed from the first day he opened his doors.

“Every time I see a patient and they tell me, ‘I can’t believe you got me in so quick,’ to me, that’s huge,” he says. “Even though we now have 15 locations and 50 providers, we’re still doing the stuff that I started way back when.”

He wants to move Apex forward from a derm group to what he calls a skin health platform, one with an even deeper impact on the Cleveland community and beyond.

To every patient and every staff member who has been part of the journey: “Thank you for the trust that you’ve put in us through all of these 15 years. It is super special that you trust us with your care. I encourage you to continue checking your skin, being proactive, being skin smart. It’s been a great journey, and I can’t wait for the next 15 years.”