Urgent-care center opens in West End

A new urgent-care center opened in the West End on Monday, a much-needed facility in a city that is still without a local hospital more than a year after Hurricane Sandy.

CityMD, which is described as a state-of-the-art facility that will provide urgent-care services to ill or injured patients, opened at 904 W. Beech St. Though not the 911 ambulance-receiving facility that many residents have called for, many said that the office will fill a void in Long Beach by easing the burden on the Fire Department by taking in patients with non-critical injuries who would otherwise be transported to an emergency room.

“There is really no access to high-quality acute care on the barrier island right now, and that’s what we bring to Long Beach,” said Dr. Neil Hadpawat, one of two board-certified emergency physicians on the new facility’s staff. “We’re obviously looking forward to supporting the community with their acute-care needs on a larger level, and bringing more high-quality access to health care, which the community deserves and quite frankly has been without.”

Though merger talks between the Long Beach Medical Center and South Nassau Communities Hospital continue, LBMC has established primary-care services at two locations off campus, at 761 Franklin Blvd. and 206 W. Park Ave. Neither, however, offers urgent-care services. And while SNCH has yet to determine when it will open its own urgent-care center at the LBMC building, CityMD remains the only walk-in facility in Long Beach for patients who need immediate care. Hadpawat said the facility provides X-ray services on site and can do blood work, as well as arranging CT scans, MRIs and ultrasounds off-site. It is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., and on weekends from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

“We handle all types of mini-emergencies, from the common cold to orthopedic injuries,” said Hadpawat, a 35-year-old Atlantic Beach resident and a former LBMC emergency room doctor. “We handle all noncritical medical emergencies, including geriatric and pediatric patients, and we’re staffed with board-certified emergency physicians. Any critical emergency, we would arrange for an ambulance to transport them to a nearby hospital.”