UF Health, community leaders celebrate opening of UF Health Urgent Care Center – Eastside

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GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Partnership was the theme of the day as leaders from UF Health , the City of Gainesville , and Alachua County gathered Wednesday to mark the opening of the UF Health Urgent Care Center – Eastside with a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

The project, which came about through a collaboration between UF Health, the city of Gainesville, and Alachua County, will expand access to quality health care for residents of Gainesville’s east side.

“This urgent care center is local to this community, joining our UF Health Family Medicine – Eastside practice on Waldo Road in bringing the excellence of UF Health’s medical expertise conveniently close to home – for our elders, for our young families, and for the vulnerable members of our community who have difficulty accessing quality health care,” said Stephen Motew , M.D., M.H.A, FACS, president and system CEO of the UF Health clinical enterprise.

The urgent care center boasts 9,000 square feet equipped with state-of-the-art equipment, including eight examination rooms, two procedure rooms, an X-ray area, laboratory services, and a community room available for meetings and gatherings. The center will be open seven days a week, with extended weekday evening hours.

“The county commission is very proud to be part of this project. We think of this as serving East Gainesville, but this is going to serve all of eastern Alachua County,” said Alachua County Commission Chair Mary Alford. “I really appreciate the partnership — and there again I said that word — the partnership that we’ve had with UF Health and the partnership that we’ve had with the city of Gainesville.”

Gainesville and Alachua County each contributed $2.25 million in federal COVID-19 relief funds from the American Rescue Plan Act, a COVID-19 stimulus relief package, to help build the center. UF Health will be responsible for the center’s ongoing operations. UF Health and local leaders say they hope the area around Southeast Hawthorne Road and Southeast 20th Street will become a medical and retail hub for one of the city’s historically underserved areas.

Gainesville Mayor Harvey Ward noted how the center was built with the community in mind.

“You were part of the process getting it built,” Ward said. “You sat in the auditorium at Lincoln Middle School and forced city and county leaders, and UF Health leaders, to take you seriously and build this the way you needed it to be built. That’s why there’s a community room right here. That’s why there are multiple exam rooms. That’s why there’s an X-ray room here. There is technology here that most facilities like this just don’t have […] because the community said, ‘this is necessary.’”

Other speakers included Gailine McCaslin, MS, PMP, LSSWB , assistant director for strategic operations at UF Health and administrator for the urgent care center; Marvin Dewar, M.D., J.D. , and CEO of UF Health Physicians; and @Ken Cornell, the Alachua County Commission’s District 4 commissioner.

UF Health Urgent Care Center – Eastside opens its doors to the public on Thursday.