New Urgent-Care Clinics Give Patients a Convenient, Affordable Choice
health care, hospitals, urgent-care clinics,
When accidents happen, the emergency room is there.
But for urgency without emergency, Danville residents have more a convenient option for medical care.
Ephraim McDowell, the same health system that runs Danville’s major hospital, has opened a new community urgent care clinic. It’s staffed with the same professionals that work at the Regional Medical Center – but at a fraction of the price.
“You can’t predict when you’re going to get sick. The goal is to reduce the number of people using the emergency department,” says Ephraim McDowell spokeswoman Maleena Streeval.
The Bluegrass Immediate Care Center opened in June 2009 and is one of four walk-in clinics Ephraim Health has established to handle patients in a more convenient and cost effective way than the ER.
Staffed with family practice and internal medicine physicians and nurse practitioners, the clinic offers weekend and late weekday hours for those who may not have a family doctor or can’t wait for an appointment.
Bluegrass Immediate Care Center is a partnership between Ephraim McDowell Health and a group of local physicians. No appointments are needed, and the clinic can treat sore throats, earaches, coughs, colds and flu, and strains, sprains and injuries that are not life threatening.
The facility also offers employment, school and sports physicals, and has a full lab and X-ray services on site. By all accounts, the response has been positive.
“We’ve been very pleased with the volume,” Streeval says. “Word spread like wildfire.”
The urgent care clinics are part of a trend that has spread through the nation in the past few years as a way to save on health-care costs.
There are approximately 18,000 walk-in, stand-alone urgent care centers in the United States, and 700-800 new clinics open every year, according to the American Academy of Urgent Care Medicine.
That’s apart from the thousands of “retail clinics” that have popped up in drugstore chains and grocery stores, usually staffed by nurses, to diagnose common ailments that can be treated with a remedy or prescription available at that store.
But hospital-affiliated urgent care clinics such as Bluegrass Immediate Care Center offer more services and an extra level of care. Patients can easily be referred to the hospital should a situation warrant it.
Ephraim McDowell’s four community clinics are the latest innovation of a community health-care system that has served the vital needs of residents of Boyle and surrounding counties since 1918.
Due to demand, a fifth clinic could be added. Streeval says residents have asked for more walk-in facilities in community forums.
“We are always looking to expand services as they’re needed,” Streeval says. “It is an express need.”
Ephraim McDowell Regional Medical Center is a 222-bed hospital that has more than 100 doctors on staff covering 32 medical specialties, a second hospital in Stanford, an assisted-living facility, a wellness center, five family medical centers, a nursing service, a children’s development center and more.
Story by Jeannie Naujeck
