Birmingham, AL – Cooper GreenMercy Health Services is changing its Urgent Care hours on Sept. 27, 2019. Effectiveon Saturday, Sept. 28, the Urgent Care Clinic will no longer be open on theweekend (currently open 1 p.m. – 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday) and Monday throughFriday it will be open 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. (currently 7 a.m. – 7 p.m.). 

Cooper Green has maintainedextended hours in order to accommodate as many patients as possible. Aftermonitoring patient traffic for the last year Cooper Green found that UrgentCare only treats an average of three to four patients a day on the weekend.During the week after 4 p.m., it has only seen an average of four patients. Inaddition, overall Urgent Care volume is down by 21 percent year-to-date.

“While we always want toserve the needs of our patients, after monitoring it for a sufficient period oftime, we believe the staffing burden outweighs the number of patients utilizingour Urgent Care services,” said Deputy Director of Cooper Green, Laura Hurst. “Othercontributing reasons include the Urgent Care competition in the area – thereare several competing facilities, and we don’t have the marketing dollars to becompetitive. We of course want to be available to our patients, but we alsohave to be financially responsible. We would rather put our resources wherepatients most need them.”

Hurst added that Cooper Greenis using the Community Assessment produced by the Health Department and othercommunity resources to determine what partnerships Cooper Green can enhance tobetter meet the needs of our population, which are not always health careneeds, but services that contribute to health.

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