Froedtert’s Kenosha Urgent Care Center, located at 6308 Eighth Ave., is now only open from 7 am to 7 pm daily for people facing conditions such as minor burns, sprains, simple puncture wounds and ear infections.
Daniel Gaitan
Froedtert’s Kenosha Urgent Care Center is no longer a 24/7 operation.
The Downtown center, located at 6308 Eighth Ave., is now only open from 7 am to 7 pm daily for people facing conditions such as minor burns, sprains, simple puncture wounds and ear infections.
The center, at the former Froedtert Kenosha Hospital site, will not accept patients outside of those hours.
Froedtert’s Kenosha Urgent Care Center, located at 6308 Eighth Ave., is now only open from 7 am to 7 pm daily for people facing conditions such as minor burns, sprains, simple puncture wounds and ear infections.
Daniel Gaitan
Froedtert converted the hospital’s emergency department into the urgent care clinic Oct. 1.
The hospital’s inpatient services and emergency department services were transitioned to Froedtert Pleasant Prairie Hospital, 9555 76th St., in a continuation of repositioning efforts to centralize the surgical and interventional services that began in 2019.
At the time of the transition, Froedtert said the effort would provide consistent availability of care as well as cost savings to patients.
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Froedtert had sponsored a story in the Kenosha News stating that a “middle-of-the-night child’s ear infection is every parent’s nightmare.”
“Bladder infections often strike suddenly and are usually painful and the bane of sufferers,” the story continued. “In cases like these, patients typically wait for doctor’s appointments or available walk-in clinics for treatment. With the opening of Kenosha’s first 24/7 urgent care center at the Froedtert Kenosha Hospital site, however, such conditions can be seen and treated more quickly.”
The story also quoted doctors who spoke about “cost savings” because prior to Oct. 1 urgent care had not been available to the Kenosha area on a 24/7 basis at a site exclusively for urgent care patients.
“Until now, if a patient couldn’t see their primary care doctor or get to one of our Immediate Care sites during the day, the only option they had was to go to the Emergency Department. Having a 24/7 urgent care option will likely to be at a lower cost and could be very helpful to those patients,” according to one doctor quoted in the sponsored story. Froedtert operates Immediate Care sites during business hours in Somers and Pleasant Prairie for even more minor conditions.
On Tuesday, Froedtert South President and CEO Ric Schmidt said the urgent care center was not caring for enough patients to justify its overnight hours.
“We just don’t have any volume from 7 pm to 7 am,” Schmidt said. “There just aren’t enough immediate care and urgent care patients to justify keeping it open from 7 pm to 7 am That’s what we’re balancing right now.”
Schmidt said the former emergency department treated some 60 patients over a 24-hour period on average.
“We’re now seeing immediate care and urgent care patients in the ballpark of a low of 45 to a high of low 60s between 7 am to 7 pm,” Schmidt said. “We’re just seeing a sprinkling of patient between 7 pm to 7 am We have mid-levels and ER doctors that staff those hours and it can’t be justified. They don’t have enough volume to make it work.”
Schmidt said major health care systems in the nation are losing “major dollars” and “you’ve got to have a business plan that is going to support it.”
Schmidt said Froedtert is open to readjusting hours to “whatever volume there is” if needed.
Kenosha Mayor John Antaramian was not immediately available for comment Tuesday.
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