Northwell Health-GoHealth opens new urgent care center in East Meadow

Northwell Health-GoHealth Urgent Care has opened a new center in East Meadow, the health system’s 38th on Long Island.

The center, at 1990 Hempstead Tpke., will be open daily and, like other urgent care facilities, will treat adults and children with health issues that are not life-threatening like respiratory and ear infections, fractures and minor cuts.

It was opened to provide nonemergency healthcare to residents in East Meadow, Uniondale, Levittown, Hempstead, Garden City and Westbury, the health system said Monday.

"We opened the East Meadow center in response to a high demand for care at nearby locations," Dr. Neal Shipley, medical director at Northwell Health-GoHealth Urgent Care, said in a statement. 

The center is in The Meadows, adjacent to a Flagstar Bank and Stew Leonard’s, he said. 

"People who may have been traveling to Levittown or another nearby location for care, can now get care closer to home," Shipley said. 

Atlanta-based GoHealth partners with health systems to bring hospital-affiliated urgent care centers to communities throughout the United States. GoHealth is partnered with 12 health systems across 16 states, operating nearly 400 centers nationwide, according to the company. 

Northwell has been in a partnership with GoHealth since 2014, the Georgia company said. 

Wendy Darwell, president and CEO of the Suburban Hospital Alliance, a regional trade group representing hospitals on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley, said urgent care centers offer affiliated health systems an opportunity to reach patients in their own communities.

“It plays a really important role in the continuum of care in the sense that it provides another option for people who have an urgent care need but not an emergent one,” Darwell said.

Darwell said urgent care centers help  hospitals by keeping less severe health problems out of emergency rooms.

Healthcare also is cheaper when provided in a non-hospital setting, making them more cost effective, she said.