We recently announced the expansion of Southside Medical Center’s East Point location, which took effect on January 12. Unfortunately, however, some of the initial commentary and news coverage about our announcement downplayed or omitted our role in serving our neighbors.
Our growth is the result of over a year-long partnership with Wellstar to expand our facility and services and to transition urgent care that they have been providing to our team of healthcare providers. Simply put, we provide much more than urgent care, and this transition will enable Southside Medical Center to offer people in East Point and surrounding communities continued access to quality, convenient urgent care in addition to an array of services such as primary care, women’s health, pediatric, dental, mental health services, discounted pharmaceuticals and many others.
Since we started working with Wellstar to coordinate treatment for urgent care patients just over a year ago, the number of people seeking care at the urgent care clinic which is next door to Southside’s clinic dropped almost 65%, from nearly 80 patients per day in October 2022 to 28 patients per day by November 2023. Many of these patients have been connected with a medical home with Southside and now are seeking services in one of our centers instead of using the urgent care. In other words, through this cooperation, we’ve been able to keep many of these people healthier and out of urgent care through personalized primary and preventative care. By arranging for preventative care, we are helping to improve their quality of life and prevent subsequent urgent care or emergency room visits.
The Atlanta and East Point communities have a critical need for preventive and primary healthcare services, especially those focused on treating chronic illnesses and our expansion in partnership with Wellstar is a step forward. Like others, we believe the community should have a hospital. We also understand the…
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