Cabarrus Family Medicine opened The Urgent Care at Poplar Tent Jan. 15.

Urgent care is defined as the delivery of ambulatory medical care outside of a hospital emergency department on a walk-in basis without a scheduled appointment.

The new clinic offers after-hours medical care that cannot be delayed until patients’ primary care physician’s office is available. This acute and sub-acute treatment includes laceration repair, foreign body removal and minor fracture managements, as well as X-ray and laboratory services.

According to a press release, The Urgent Care at Poplar Tent should provide benefits community wide, as a convenience for patients and as a relief to the hospital’s emergency department.

According to the Center for Disease Control, patient visits to hospital emergency departments average 3.2 hours, and 40 percent of these visits are for non-urgent or semi-urgent problems. Many of these emergency department visits are more appropriately managed through urgent care.

Dr. David Tignor, the leader behind the urgent care project and clinic director at CFM’s Poplar Tent location explained, “This endeavor will help relieve some of the community problems with emergency department overcrowding.”

The Urgent Care at Poplar Tent aims to provide high quality, efficient, after-hours care to the community. This will also offer cost savings to both patients and insurers.

Dari Caldwell, vice president of clinic services for CFM said, “There is a huge need in the community for this. Residential growth is tremendous around the Poplar Tent area, and currently, these people do not have anywhere to go for urgent care. We’re trying to meet that need.”