Redmond announces 2nd urgent care
In addition to the one being built on Shorter Avenue, the hospital partnership breaks ground for another on Turner McCall.
A partnership between Redmond Regional Medical Center and the SmartCare Medical Group is bringing two new urgent care facilities to Rome. Ground was broken Thursday night for the urgent care at 1810 Turner McCall Blvd. at East Ninth Street. The center at 609 Shorter Ave., at the Division Street intersection, is well underway and slated to open before the end of the year.
Redmond CEO John Quinlivan said that SmartCare has partnered corporately with
HCA and launched new urgent care centers in Atlanta a couple of years ago.
“We’ve been very closely monitoring the progress of the centers in Atlanta and they’ve done great,” Quinlivan said. “They know this business. They know what they’re doing, they’re good people and they share our values.”
Samir Bhatia, CEO of SmartCare, said the new center on Turner McCall Boulevard would be ready to open in March of 2019.
Bhatia said the centers will have a total of four physicians and four nurse practitioners/physicians assistants, hired out of the local medical community.
Quinlivan said the medical director for the new facilities will be Dr. George Aristide, already a resident of the Rome area.
“He is an emergency medicine trained physician,” Quinlivan said. “We’ve known him at Redmond for years, but we haven’t had the opportunity to work with him before and we’re very excited to have that opportunity now.”
Quinlivan said the one thing he has learned about being a hospital administrator is that to have success with critical services is the first thing you need is a good physician to build around.
“Dr. Aristide is an expert in emergency medical services, he has spent his career providing urgent care and there is nobody better, I would be more than happy to partner with Dr. Aristide,” said Quinlivan.
This marks Redmond’s first foray into urgent care services in a bid to add more points of access to patients throughout Rome and Floyd County.
“Providing a cost-effective health care solution for the county is what this expansion is about,” Bhatia said. “We want to make sure the patients of Redmond Regional can immediately access the network when they need urgent medical care every day, all year long.”
Both urgent care centers will be open 12 hours a day from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekends.