Atmore Community Hospital and Escambia County Health Care Authority break ground on its new urgent clinic
Above, from left, Suzanne McGill, Chris Griffin, Brad Lowery, Debbie Rowell, Nancy Lowrey, Bob Jones, Jim Johnson, Sharon Davidson, Yolanda Webster, Jeff Booth, Don Ward, Jerome Webster, Bo Brantley, Mayor Jim Staff, Raymond Wiggins and Brandon Smith.
On Tuesday, June 29, officials from the Atmore Community Hospital and Escambia County Health Care Authority (ECHCA) gathered to break ground on a new urgent care clinic on Highway 21 across from Wind Creek Casino in Atmore.
The facility is slotted to open in March 2022 and will offer non emergent need and increased access to healthcare for the city of Atmore and surrounding communities. It will feature a lab, x-ray equipment, a pharmacy and wellness care. It will replace the current walk-in clinic, expanding it to a fully functioning urgent care facility.
The project has been on the drawing board for about two years and plans on other ways to positively impact the way Atmore community gets healthcare delivered are still being worked on.
"Our strategy for moving to this site is not just a new building at a new site, but we are passionate about beginning to do an expansion of the impact on the health of all the citizens of Escambia County," said Jeff Booth, ECHCA CEO. "Healthcare is one thing, and we take that very seriously, delivering the highest quality if healthcare that we can, but we will use this initiative to expand the front end of wellness screening and so on, the types of things that, unfortunately, are not as advanced as they should be in many counties in the southeast. We have disparities of care and a large number of our citizens who don't have access to basic prevention and screening. We will continue to deliver the highest quality of healthcare possible out of all of our two hospitals and clinics but also expand our efforts to reach more people in the community and to provide more front end prevention screening services. We're excited about this."
Phase I of the ECHCA includes the urgent care clinic with the goal of expanding specialty services to the community, including coordinating efforts with larger hospitals and having specialty physicians see patients at the new facility in rotation perodically. Additions include integrating employee health programs such as wellness screenings and preventative care.
Atmore Community Hospital's Administrator Brad Lowery expressed his enthusiasm to the early-morning crowd.
"I'm excited, and again, thank you to the mayor, county commissioners, and all of our partners," said Lowery. "We're committed to this community and we feel ya'll are committed to us. There are a lot of great people and a lot of great clinicians at Atmore hospital. We are excited to get to this point, to show we are at that next point."
"This is the first step of many in a project that will culminate with the urgent care facility in the spring of 2022," said ECHCA Board Chairwoman Debbie Rowell. "It has been a real team effort to get us to this wonderful milestone and we look forward to the progress we'll make in the months ahead."
