Praxis Health to close La Grande Urgent Care in August
Closure allow La Grande Family Medicine to expand primary care coverageLA GRANDE — After serving the community for the last five years, the La Grande Urgent Care will close in August. Praxis Health made the. . .
Closure allow La Grande Family Medicine to expand primary care coverageLA GRANDE — After serving the community for the last five years, the La Grande Urgent Care will close in August. Praxis Health made the decision in partnership with the local teams at La Grande Family Medicine, 2011 Fourth St. , and the La Grande Urgent Care, according to Chief Operating Officer Mike Olson. It was not a decision anyone made lightly. “We’ve really been looking hard,” Olson said. “We have a fairly small clinic space and we’ve just been assessing what would be most useful for La Grande and the surrounding community. ”The urgent care first opened during the coronavirus pandemic, Olson said, in response to the need for an additional option within the community. The need, however, has changed. “It was a busy urgent care the first year — year and a half,” he said. At the start, Olson said, the urgent care was serving around 20 patients per day. That number of patients is ideal for an urgent care provider. Now, La Grande Urgent Care typically sees 10 patients per day. This includes the weekends, Olson said, which are normally expected to be busier than weekends. This has been a consistent trend over the last two years. “It’s not quite really proving a major need for the community,” Olson said. “On average, it’s pretty low volume for an urgent care. ”The team evaluated the need, considered how the space might better serve the community and opted to close the urgent care. The urgent care will remain open through Aug. 14. “We make every effort to preserve same-day visits and do everything we can so that patients can be seen by the primary care team,” Olson said. The urgent care occupies two exam rooms within the building. Closing this service frees up that space and allows La Grande Family Medicine to bring on another primary care provider. Ideally the clinic will add another primary care provider by the end of the year, Olson said, which will allow the organization to serve an additional 1,200 to 1,500 patients a year. Jamie Dickenson also joined the team earlier this year as a licensed clinical social worker, which expanded patient support and care. The support team and clinic leadership will remain onboard, Olson said. They also gave the urgent care team more than 90-day notice of the upcoming change. “That’s unique,” he said. “We had confidence that people would still be here in early August to continue to care for patients. ”A number of employees with the urgent care team will be staying on at La Grande Family Medicine, the COO added, while others are moving on to different opportunities — whether that be retirement, an EMT nursing program or relocating to a new city. “We really made every effort to create positions for the entire staff,” Olson said.