The business partners met in the emergency room at Rochester General Hospital as board-certified emergency medicine physicians. Steph Corey, M.D. had just moved to Rochester from New York City, when Rich Coia, M.D. who had already been there a year, walked over and introduced himself.
Corey quickly learned Coia would soon be getting braces. She had been through the same process in her twenties and joked with him about all the treats he would have to avoid. Corey and her husband later met Coia out for dinner, the night before he was scheduled to get his braces. They brought him a bag of gummy bears he couldn’t eat. “We’ve been best friends ever since,” she says.
They got the idea to start Refresh Med Spa a couple years ago while in the ER. Some nurses were chatting about injectables, when one commented, “You guys should do Botox and fillers. I would come to you.” The idea got them thinking.
“COVID really changed all of medicine. It made a huge impact on our workplace and work satisfaction,” Corey says. “We found when we worked in the emergency room, people were distressed. People are unhappy. The wait times have become crazy. Doctors have nothing to do with it, but we’re the face of it and hearing the complaints.
“And the people we help the most in the emergency room are in really bad shape,” Corey says. Once they are stabilized, they go to another doctor, another department. “We don’t have much of a positive feedback loop,” Corey reflects.
One day, Coia signed them up for training to learn how to administer injectables. Corey says they realized the job was far less challenging and stressful than treating people in the ER. They were having fun.
Two years later, Refresh Med Spa is operating in a historic East Avenue building and has added services beyond injectables that include laser skin resurfacing, microneedling, laser hair removal, IV Nutritional Therapy–vitamins, minerals, electrolytes, and antioxidants delivered into the bloodstream.
“Fillers are instant gratification,” she says. “People come asking for something that is completely elective: They’re leaving happy. It’s just such a refreshing, different way for us to apply our knowledge of medicine.”