New East Memphis urgent care highlights national trend

In fall 2019, residents and businesses in the Poplar/Perkins area of Memphis will have a new health care option.

MedPost Urgent Care will open in the Nordstrom Rack-anchored Poplar Commons shopping center, and despite its relatively small size, the facility represents an ongoing trend in health care.

Urgent and minor medical clinics are increasingly filling a gap between more traditional health care options and patient needs.

“Not everybody needs to go to an emergency room [or] to a hospital,” said Dr. Audrey Gregory, Memphis market president and CEO of Saint Francis Healthcare. “So, a lot of patients don’t have [care] access [and] they don’t necessarily have a primary care provider.”

Tenet Healthcare owns Saint Francis Hospital-Memphis and Saint Francis Hospital-Bartlett, as well as the MedPost brand of clinics. The new MedPost location on Poplar Avenue will be Tenet’s sixth in Memphis, and the for-profit company has more than 100 nationwide.

Each location is staffed by about seven to 10 employees, depending on the volume of patients, which can vary but ranges from 700 to 1,500 a month. The MedPost staff includes a physician or a physician “extender” such as a nurse practitioner or a physician assistant.

Typically, MedPost locations most commonly see respiratory infections and illnesses, flu, strains and sprains, and childhood illnesses. The clinics can do simple imaging, labs, and diagnostics. More complex cases are referred out.

According to Gregory, the Memphis-area MedPost locations — in Bartlett, Collierville, Cordova, Germantown, and Olive Branch — provide an extension of the Saint Francis health system’s overall care network.

“If you are a staff member in the urgent care center, you will know when something is beyond an urgent care capability, and then that patient will be transferred to the appropriate emergency department,” Gregory said.

While the Memphis location on Poplar Avenue is the only new clinic currently planned, Gregory is continually assessing the market and needs within the Saint Francis system.

“[Determining] where we need to add or if we need to add a new location, I’m always looking to see, ‘How can we increase access to the members of our community?,’” Gregory said.

“It really comes down to patients being able to choose where they access care,” she continued.

https://www.bizjournals.com/memphis/news/2019/05/23/new-east-memphis-urgent-care-highlightsnational.html?ana=yahoo&yptr=yahoo