Urgent Health Care has officially come to Braddock. Allegheny Health Network’s new Braddock Urgent Care Center is filling a gap left when UPMC closed the 123-bed hospital on Jan 31, 2010 because it wasn’t making a profit. This forced residents of Braddock and surrounding communities to travel as far away as McKeesport or the city of Pittsburgh for their urgent care needs.
Now they don’t have to go any further than 501 Braddock Ave. where a state of the art facility staffed by board certified physicians and physician extenders and equipped with 12 patient exam rooms X-Ray imaging and blood work diagnostic capabilities are waiting for them.
Urgent care centers primarily treat injuries or illnesses requiring immediate care, but not serious enough to require an ER visit. Urgent care is a new dimension of health care being provided to communities that prevents emergency rooms from being clogged with maladies ranging from sprains, breathing difficulties, bleeding requiring stitches diagnostic services, including X-rays and laboratory tests, flu or skin rashes and infections, such as Urinary tract infections.
This does not include: Compound fractures, seizures or loss of consciousness, fever in newborns deep knife wounds or gunshot wounds moderate to severe burns, poisoning, serious head, neck or back injury, pregnancy-related problems severe abdominal pain, heart attack signs, of stroke suicidal or homicidal feelings. Just to name a few. If a person is experiencing any of the aforementioned symptoms you should still call 911.
Medical Director Dr. Mitchel McCandlish believes that the new clinic has the ability to stabilize such conditions before transporting them to a general care facility but the facility is not intended to do so.
“Since opening on the 5th, I have treated cases such as diabetic ketoacidosis, and C.O.P.D.,” McCandlish said.
Walking into the state-of-the-art Braddock Urgent Care Center, one enters a spacious waiting area streamlined into a U-shape to sign in and pre-diagnose patients for the care they will require. The patient then walks behind the green door to the examination room.
If the patient should require further diagnostics, further aft in the middle of the U are x-ray machines and larger exam rooms for people who may choose to visit with family accompanying them, before walking out of the u through another door back into the waiting room.
Paul Costa, D-34, who helped make the AHN Urgent Care Center possible and was the first tenant in the building that houses the center, is elated for the prospects of the citizens of his district.
“I can’t thank Highmark and Allegheny Health Network enough for providing this facility enough. That they made the commitment to be part of this community. It may not make a lot of money for them if anything at all but they are doing it because it is the right thing to do to provide service for the community.”
The addition of the urgent care facility is a move that makes strategic sense for a neighborhood that lost its last facility due to a perceived abuse of the system from the point of view of UPMC.
According to Costa, “One of UPMC’s complaints before leaving was instead of (people) getting treatment leading up to (illness) and in the true sense of emergency going to the ER, people in the area unfortunately didn’t have insurance and were using the emergency room as a doctor’s office.”
The AHN Urgent Care Center is part of a $20.3 million redevelopment project that includes 30,000 square feet of office and retail space, 24 units of rental housing, 11 single family homes and a 20,000 square-foot community park. The center is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekends. No appointment is necessary and free parking is available.
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