The new urgent care clinic located in the Allen Nokes Center on the St. Luke’s McCall campus is set to open on Tuesday, Aug. 8. The clinic will be open for walk-in only care from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., seven days a week.

“We are excited to be opening soon. We know how important it is to have urgent care services available to our community,” St. Luke’s McCall Chief Operating and Nursing Officer Amber Green said. “Having expanded hours with an urgent care clinic will help us better serve our community’s needs and reduce the need for people to seek care through the emergency department when they can be better served at a more affordable option through urgent care.”

The new urgent care clinic will share space in the Allen Nokes Center with McCall’s orthopedic surgery and general surgery clinics.

The building was remodeled to accommodate the new urgent care that includes three new exams rooms, procedure room, shared registration with the orthopedic and general surgery clinics, waiting area and support space. This is in addition to the four existing orthopedic surgery rooms and procedure room.

An X-ray machine was installed in early 2022 to serve the orthopedic surgery clinic. This machine will now serve both orthopedic surgery and the urgent care clinic.

The surgical clinic exam rooms can be used to serve urgent care clinic patients, if needed, after hours and on the weekends.

The new clinic will replace the current same-day appointment services offered at St. Luke’s Clinic – Payette Lakes Family Medicine. The same-day clinic providers will transition to the new urgent care clinic.

When reviewing the need for an urgent care clinic in 2020, the team analyzed the types of cases seen in the St. Luke’s McCall emergency department. The data revealed that more than 45% of the 6,538 emergency room visits in 2019 were considered “less urgent” and could have been handled by an urgent care clinic.

Projections anticipate serving 8,000 people per year in the urgent care clinic, increasing capacity by an additional 2,000 visits per year, compared to the number of patients that are being seen in the same-day appointment clinic.

The overall cost of the remodel is $3.3 million, which includes parking lot improvements that serves both patients and employees. The McCall Memorial Hospital District committed to fund $2.6 million from St. Luke’s FY22 and FY23 funding requests and the St. Luke’s McCall Foundation has raised more than $730,000 through the generosity of community donations and grants.

“Being able to open the urgent care clinic this year is because of the amazing support we received from the McCall Memorial Hospital District and the St. Luke’s McCall Foundation for funding this project,” Green said. “St. Luke’s capital improvement investment in McCall has been on the hospital expansion project. We likely would have had to wait for a few more years if it wasn’t for the District and the Foundation.”

The Allen Nokes Center is the original Payette Lakes Medical Clinic built in 1964. The Hospital District acquired the building through a combined donation and purchase in 2000 when the current Payette Lakes Clinic was built. The building over the years has housed administrative offices, a conference room, behavioral health services, visiting specialists, hospice care and a sleep lab.