Southern Ohio Medical Center is creating a new Urgent Care facility in the building located on the old Mercy Hospital lot on Kinney’s Lane, with entrance on 17th Street.

“Effective Sunday, June 20, at 9 a.m., the Health Care Center that has provided emergency care at the South Campus of the hospital is going to officially become Urgent Care Center-Portsmouth,” Mary Kate Dilts-Skaggs, director of Emergency and Outpatient Services for SOMC, said.

“We also have an Urgent Care Center in Wheelersburg that has been in operation for about 12 years. Based on requests from the community, and our goal to provide more economical health care and more access to health care, Southern Ohio Medical Center made the decision to convert our South Campus Emergency Department to an Urgent Care Center.”

Two features Dilts-Skaggs said people will find at the new facility are lower co-pays and a goal of a 60-minute door-to-discharge experience, as well as providing excellent customer service and excellent quality medical care.

“The main Emergency Department has been expanded in the last two years. We now have 44 beds. We believe that any emergency patients that were previously seen at the South Campus can be seen at the Main Campus. And the Main Campus will, of course, be open 24 hours a day,” Dilts-Skaggs said.

Cathy Davis, nurse manager at the facility, said a variety of injuries and illnesses will be seen at the new Urgent Care-Portsmouth.

“We’ll be seeing sprains, strains, fevers, colds, flus, minor lacerations, anything like that,” Davis said. “If abdominal pains or something would come in and need additional care, we would transfer them to the Main Campus for additional treatment.”

Davis said if a child had symptoms such as fever, sore throat, earache or something along that line, parents should probably bring them to the Urgent Care Center.

If the person had something such as bleeding that is uncontrolled or something such as severe abdominal pain, head injury, or chest pain, they should be taken directly to the Main Campus Emergency Department.

Davis said Urgent Care Center-Portsmouth will operate from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily.

“There won’t be any differences in hours at our place,” Davis said. “We’ll still be doing outpatient lab at the Urgent Care. We’ll still be doing an ambulatory infusion clinic that we currently run at the Health Care Center. That will have no change at all. We do I.V. antibiotics, blood transfusions, different I.V. therapy — that won’t change. Really, the only change will be the type of patient that we see.”

In addition to the Urgent Care Center, there will be an Athletic Training Outreach Program.

“We have developed and we are deploying a robust Athletic Training Program to local schools,” Ben Gill, director of Physicians Services at SOMC, said. “And for those schools that participate in a relationship with us, we’ll provide priority access to all of our Urgent Care facilities in the evenings after practices. And at Urgent Care-Portsmouth, we will be having a Saturday morning Sports Injury Clinic, where the student athletes who participate with this training outreach will have priority access to come in and meet with the trainer and a sports doctor.”

FRANK LEWIS can be reached at (740) 353-3101, ext. 232 or flewis@heartlandpublications.com