A new urgent care center opened in Great Neck Plaza on Monday, adding a medical facility affiliated with Northwell Health to the area.
The center is a partnership between Northwell Health Venture Operations and GoHealth Urgent Care, which opened their first center together in 2014. They have since opened nearly 40 facilities.
“It was critically important for us to be able to launch a center that is truly world class and provide a patient with everything they would come to expect in an urgent care center,” Adam Boll, the vice president of Northwell Health Venture Operations, said in an interview.
This opening follows the unveiling of a similar facility in Port Washington in September and one in Roslyn last year.
Urgent Care representatives said that they have had their eyes on Great Neck for more than a year because finding an ideal place in the area can be hard. But when a storefront became available in the Gardens at Great Neck shopping center within walking distance of the train station, representatives found the location was ideal.
“We tend to like to locate our centers where people live their lives,” Sarah Arora, the New York market president for GoHealth Urgent Care, said in an interview.
Krisha Billini, the operations manager at the Great Neck facility and other locations, said people coming in can be treated for things like flu, fractures and splinters. The staff can also use IVs, prescribe medications and transfer emergencies to other facilities, she said.
The center has four treatment rooms and is equipped with X-ray machines and screens to quickly display what issues a patient may have. Each facility has a medical doctor, physician’s assistant, radiologist and others on staff.
They typically can see dozens of people a day.
“We’re not an emergency room, but we’re also not a primary care physician’s office,” Arora said. “The rule of thumb that we go by is that if it’s not life threatening, we can take care of it.”
And Jakia Zaman, a radiological technologist at Great Neck’s urgent care center, said one of the biggest lessons one can learn working there is to never underestimate someone’s symptoms.
“We take every sign and symptom seriously,” Zaman said, noting that a patient could be developing something like pneumonia.
Boll said that the center, like the others, uses an online checking and registration system. This allows patients to reserve a time and see current wait times.
Additionally, he noted, the center has access to Northwell’s records and can immediately transmit digital images to its radiology department.
“It’s been a tremendous collaborative effort over the past number of years,” Boll said.
Northwell Health-GoHealth Urgent Care is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends.
