Springfield Clinic will hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 11 a.m. on Friday, Feb. 21, for the region’s first high acuity urgent care.
Urgent Care Plus is intended to bridge the gap between a traditional urgent care and the emergency room, offering high acuity care in a more accessible and efficient setting. The event will take place at the newly renovated facility, located at 350 W. Carpenter St. in Springfield.
Staffed by board-certified emergency medicine doctors, the facility will provide care beyond what is offered in Springfield’s current urgent care offices but less than what is provided at ERs for critically ill patients dealing with strokes, heart attacks and gunshot wounds.
Urgent Care Plus, which initially will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. seven days a week and holidays, will be able to set broken bones, administer intravenous fluids and other IV medicines, as well as care for traditional urgent care patients. It also will include an on-site medical laboratory and scanning technology. Patients will be able to walk in or schedule appointments online.
“I’m confident there is a need for this in Springfield,” said Dr. DJ Goldberg, who will be co-medical director of Urgent Care Plus with Dr. Janda Stevens.
Goldberg, 44, and Stevens, 47, are veteran ER doctors who have been working in the St. John’s emergency department. They will become full-time physicians with Springfield Clinic and will staff Urgent Care Plus along with Dr. Kristen Ferguson, another board-certified emergency medicine physician.
ERs are important to Springfield’s acute-care hospitals, both of which are Level 1 trauma centers. More than half of all patients admitted to the hospitals come through their ERs.
But of all the patients who seek care at the ERs, only 30% are admitted. The rest are discharged home. It’s that 70% of patients who will be the target audience for Urgent Care Plus, Goldberg and Stevens said.
“If you need to call an ambulance, you’re not coming to our new facility,” Goldberg said. “We are very well able to identify what patients are appropriate to be cared for in our facility and which ones are too sick and definitely need to be in a hospital facility. That literally is our job.”
Goldberg added that Urgent Care Plus won’t be equipped to serve patients with mental illness and behavioral-health issues.
Urgent Care Plus is part of a nationwide trend in medicine and may be the first of its kind in central Illinois that provides care for a broader range of patients than are typically served in clinics that call themselves urgent care, prompt care or express care.
For example, Urgent Care Plus will be able to care for patients dealing with kidney stones, provide initial stabilization for bowel obstructions, stitch up many cuts and provide IV care for dehydration, diabetes, migraine headaches, high blood pressure and infections such as cellulitis.
Similar facilities operate in St. Louis and are called Total Access Urgent Care, and in Michigan as RightCare Clinics.
Urgent Care Plus will be in a one-story building in the Mid-Illinois Medical District that the clinic previously used for the outpatient offices of several specialists. The clinic spent more than $4 million to renovate the structure, according to Springfield building permits. The facility will cover 15,000 square feet and include 24 exam rooms and one procedure room.
Urgent Care Plus will be part of the clinic’s Urgent Care network and will create about 25 new jobs, said Zach Kerker, chief brand and advocacy officer for the physician-owned, for-profit clinic.
In addition to the three doctors, there will be three more medical providers who are either nurse practitioners or physician assistants. Other staff will include registered nurses, nursing technicians and office assistants.
Urgent Care Plus will accept private insurance, Medicare and Medicaid, and will serve uninsured patients. Out-of-pocket charges for insured patients will be the same as what they pay for using a traditional urgent care facility rather than an ER, Goldberg said. IVs, scans and other procedures will be billed separately as outpatient services.
Goldberg and Stevens said they are confident Urgent Care Plus patients will be served faster than in a traditional ER. That’s because of the number of exam rooms available, and because the clinic has committed to adequately staff the facility.
Unlike in a hospital ER, rooms won’t be clogged with patients waiting to be admitted and transferred to a bed on a floor of a hospital, the doctors said. And they said Urgent Care Plus isn’t being designed for critically ill patients who need ER care and are more time-consuming to serve.
Depending on demand, hours could be expanded for Urgent Care Plus, Goldberg said.
Springfield Clinic’s existing network of primary-care doctors and specialists was a key factor in developing Urgent Care Plus because the network allows seamless follow-up care, Goldberg said. The facility also will refer to other doctors if patients have a preference.
