WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Staff and contractors were completing the final touches on Monday to prepare for the opening of Berkshire Health System's new urgent care center. 

 

Robert Shearer, administrative director of urgent care, said the work would be done in time for Berkshire Health Urgent Care North to open Tuesday at 11 a.m. in a wing of Williamstown Medical on Adams Road.  

 

The urgent care center will occupy a suite of rooms off the right side of the entry, with two treatment rooms, offices, amenities, and X-ray room. 

 

"This is a test of the need in the community, the want in the community, to see just how much we need," said Shearer. "One thing that I think Berkshire Health Systems has always been really good at is kind of gauging the need and growing based on what the community tells us. 

 

"And so if we on day one and two and three, find that we're filling this up and maybe exceeding the capacity of the two exam rooms and one provider, then we look to expand it."

 

Hours will be weekdays from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and weekends from 8 to noon, but the expectation is that the center will "expand those hours pretty quick."

 

BHS has two urgent care centers in Lenox and in Pittsfield. The health system had tried a walk-in center at Williamstown nearly a decade ago but shuttered over low volume of patients. 

 

Michael Leary, director of media relations, said the walk-in had limited treatment capacity and was only open during the day weekdays, and it didn't have an X-ray machine. 

 

"This has hours in the evening, so that people who get out of work at five o'clock still have the opportunity to come here before seven and be seen," he said. "It wasn't open weekends. This is open weekends."

 

The walk-in was also mostly bumps and bruises, whereas the urgent care will be able to treat more serious medical issues that don't rise to emergency room need. 

 

"We have urgent-care trained, emergency department-trained providers who can do things like sutures and I&D [incision and drainage], and there are procedures like splinting and again, the X-ray, which you wouldn't get so much from a walk in," said Shearer. "A walk-in is more like a primary care type visit that you would just get, like on the fly. So the services are greater to what we're doing."

 

The staff will include one provider, either a nurse practitioner or physician's assistant, with access to a physician for consult. The staff rotates between the urgent care centers so while some new staff is being added, most have years of experience. 

 

"The best part about Berkshire Health Systems urgent cares, is they're not a free standing. They're not disconnected from the network, we are part of Berkshire Health System's network of providers," Shearer said. "So if you if you see a primary care doc that's within Berkshire Health Systems, they have immediate access to all of the things that we've done here. 

 

"So we're an extension, really, and that's the best way to explain it to peoples. We're an extension of your primary if they can't see you today, that's totally fine. We'll see you, and they have access to everything we did, so it's a seamless transfer of care, and so they can follow up with you. If you sprained your ankle, they can do their follow-up care afterwards, but you can get your care today."

 

Berkshire Health Systems accepts most insurance providers including Mass Health, Medicare, private plans, and commercial plans.

 

As for the practice that was in the suite, they haven't left, Shearer said. There was room to shuffle things around to open up space for the urgent care.  

 

Leary said the urgent care center is a natural expansion of the health system, particularly since the urgent care center in the Stop & Shop plaza abruptly closed in August. 

 

"We've done so much in North Berkshire to expand access over the past several years, when the hospital closed, we opened the North Adams campus of BMC and kept emergency care going, and then added all the other things, radiology and all that other stuff, and then reopened the hospital," he said. "And I think it was just time for us to look at what are the urgent-care needs in North Berkshire? And especially with the closing of the other urgent care center, it's certainly a need that needs to be filled in North Berkshire."