New Urgent Care Center To Open

I'd read about this earlier on in the Times- Standard. I guess I didn't read it well enough, though. I thought St. Joseph's Hospital's new urgent care clinic was already open. I guess it will officially open next Monday. I guess I won't be going there today as I was planning.

It was also news to me that they have an urgent care clinic at at the General Hospital campus down the street. I think they used to have one down on F street in Eureka and didn't know it had been moved. Do they not advertise such things, or am I just not paying attention?

Every community should have some kind of urgent care clinic where people can go in and take care of minor medical needs on a first come- first serve basis. Eureka residents should be glad they have this option and other communities should try and get something like this started.

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One thing I find odd is comments by hospital folk that non- emergency patients are clogging up the emergency rooms when there's urgent care available. Do they ever tell these non- emergency types
to go to the urgent care facility instead? I was told that the St. Joseph's ER was crammed to the gills back when flu was hitting hard. Shouldn't they have sent the flu cases to the General Hospital urgent care?

I don't believe I've heard of anybody being referred to urgent care by emergency room folk. Then again, maybe I was listening?

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Addendum: This just in from Courtney Hunt- Munther, Communications Coordinator for St. Joseph's Hospital:

Just to clarify a few things...
We're moving Urgent Care from General Hospital campus to a brand
new facility on the main St. Joseph Hospital campus. We'll
start treating patients there on Monday, April 21; until then,
urgent care will remain open at General. Urgent Care at General
will close for good on Sunday. Also, we can't legally deny
patients treatment if they come to the emergency room first
instead of urgent care. We can, however, send people in need
of immediate treatment from urgent care to the ER. That's
why we're trying to educate folks on when to go to Urgent Care
and when to go to ER...to avoid massive pile-ups like
we had during flu season....