St. Vincent’s One Nineteen to open urgent care center

By Stephanie Holderby

From a swollen ankle from an early Sunday morning baseball practice to a sore throat that worsens over the weekend, at one time or another, everyone needs medical care outside the typical physician’s office hours.

These are some medical gap scenarios Urgent Care centers – stand-alone medical offices now commonplace along Alabama highways – fill.

However, St. Vincent’s One Nineteen’s Urgent Care Center, opening later this year, is anything but commonplace. We will offer something more than immediate attention for sprains, swabs and sons with sports forms.

What makes our urgent care unique is that it’s not a stand-alone center. By being a part of St. Vincent’s, our patients will have access to the full range of expertise within our health system. In addition, we are able to establish a continuum of care for the patient.

An example of this is when a patient comes to St. Vincent’s One Nineteen’s Urgent Care with seemingly non-emergent symptoms that are actually indications of a more serious issue. A St. Vincent’s Urgent Care physician would consult with the St. Vincent’s Birmingham emergency department doctor. Even though the physicians aren’t in the same facility, they’re within the same system and can view the x-rays or other diagnostics together and collaborate. In addition, if the patient needs to be transferred to St. Vincent’s Birmingham, the emergency department won’t have to start over. The records can be shared – helping to decrease the patient’s length of stay and time it might take for treatment.

Another beneficial aspect of St. Vincent’s One Nineteen’s Urgent Care is the coordination with a patient’s primary care physician. After leaving the Urgent Care Center, a patient’s primary care physician is contacted, so they can include your treatment as part of your medical record. This helps to continue providing a continuum of care. Many Urgent Care facilities don’t have this level of coordination, leaving primary care physicians unaware of additional treatments and prescriptions patients are receiving. And if patients don’t have a primary care physician, St. Vincent’s can offer a referral, so patients can form this key relationship with a physician who knows their medical history.

In addition, we’ve designed every aspect of our urgent care facility to be centered around the needs of our patients. From convenient surface level parking to extended weekday and weekend hours to little to no wait times, the Urgent Care Center will offer patients the experience and expertise of St. Vincent’s Health System accessible right in their own community.

St. Vincent’s One Nineteen’s Urgent Care Center will open soon, as part of the overall expansion project on the campus, which includes outpatient surgery and additional physician offices. The Urgent Care Center will be located at 7191 Cahaba Valley Road right off U.S. 280 on Highway 119. To learn more about our full range of “Healthcare Like No Other services, visit Onenineteen.com.

Stephanie Holderby is vice president of operations of St. Vincent’s Ambulatory Healthcare Network and executive director of St. Vincent’s One Nineteen.