Urgent care coming in May to Sahuarita

Carondelet Health Network is planning to open a seven-day a week urgent care center in the Rancho Sahuarita Marketplace in May, a Carondelet official said Tuesday.

Several primary care physicians also are expected to have offices there.

The urgent care center is expected to be open weekday afternoons from about 2 or 3 p.m. until 10 or 11 p.m. and will be open on weekends, though possibly with shorter hours, Richard Polheber, CEO of Carondelet’s Holy Cross Hospital in Nogales, said.

Polheber, who is heading up planning for a hospital in Sahuarita set to open in 2012, appeared before a committee of the Green Valley Community Coordinating Council.

The urgent care center would offer a badly needed service to the Green Valley and Sahuarita communities. It could handle many medical problems that now require drives to Tucson emergency rooms. It will be located on the northeast corner of Interstate 19 and Sahuarita Road, near the Fry’s supermarket that is under construction, and Polheber said Carondelet is hoping to place signs along the freeway. Carondelet officials are planning to open offices for two to three primary care physicians in or near the urgent care and are debating whether to include pediatric services in the mix.

Polheber said the urgent care center will be the network’s first presence in Sahuarita. The next step would be opening a medical office building in late 2009 on the 36-acre hospital campus, which is on the southwest corner of Sahuarita Road and La Villita Road.

That building could start with physical therapy and behavioral health services and sophisticated imaging services such as CT scans, MRIs and mammography.

“We don’t own our own office buildings, we have a third party working on that, but it could be a cornerstone of our efforts to recruit physicians,” Polheber said.

Health network officials are mulling over whether to open an emergency room before the hospital itself opens, Polheber said. Officials of Carondelet, which is part of the national Ascension Health system, will be visiting Austin, Texas, this month to research the experience of Dell Children’s Medical Center of Central Texas, which officially opened on June 30, but began handling emergency cases a week or so earlier because a small staff was on hand and people began showing up.

Construction is expected to begin in 2011 on the 150,000-square-foot, 78-bed Sahuarita hospital, which will employ about 180 people and will include a fully staffed emergency room and sophisticated imaging services. Its construction costs have risen, according to the most recent estimate, to $84 million, from $76 million.

pfranchine@sahuaritasun.com | 547-9738