Essentia Health Opens New Urgent Care at Deerwood Clinic

After recently holding a groundbreaking ceremony for a new orthopedic urgent care center in Baxter last week, Essentia Health is expanding their brand even more with the opening of a new urgent care at its Deerwood clinic.

The urgent care is the first in the Deerwood community and was opened as an alternative to an emergency room. According to Steve Palmer, section chair for Essentia Health’s Brainerd Lakes urgent care, the Baxter clinic served about the same amount of people as their emergency room last year, and Deerwood was the perfect spot to open a new location.

“We identified it as an area that had that need for the acute walk-in center because again, the only services available previously were emergency department, so we want this as an alternative to that,” explained Palmer. “If somebody comes in and they’re very sick, we’re going to certainly take care of them to the best of our abilities. But we do have plenty of resources that if they need a higher level of care, we can get them where they need to be.”

The Deerwood urgent care is now open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.