The Mid-Valley has a new healthcare option with Knapp Medical Center extending urgent care at a Mercedes clinic it jointly operates with the UTRGV School of Medicine.
Knapp Medical of Weslaco recently added urgent care to the services offered at the UT Health RGV/Knapp Family Health Center at Expressway 83 and North Mile 2 W Road. A wide range of essential medical services are offered by UTRGV staff during daytime hours, including immunizations, physicals and wellness exams. In the evenings, Knapp medical staff works at the new Mid Valley Urgent Care and treats injuries, illnesses associated with fevers and colds, and also provides stitches and laceration care.
It marks the full utilization of the nearly 14,000-square-foot Mercedes clinic and demonstrates how UTRGV can collaborate with area hospital systems to improve health care in the Rio Grande Valley.
“We wanted to do something in the Mid-Valley for care after hours,” said Dr. Ruddy Valdes, Knapp’s medical director for emergency and urgent care. “Families and residents in this area can now come here for minor emergencies. This is a great option that’s local.”
Needed Option
Mercedes Mayor Oscar Montoya recalled that as a young father, he and his wife were dealing one night with a baby who wouldn’t stop crying.
“Knapp Medical is all we had back then,” Montoya said of where he took his young son. “You go to an emergency room at a hospital and it’s wall-to-wall people. This is a whole other option that we really needed in Mercedes and in the Mid-Valley.”
Montoya made his remarks at a Nov. 9 event at the Mercedes clinic that drew Knapp Medical administrators and Mid-Valley community leaders in celebrating the expansion of services at the family health center. State Sen. Morgan LaMantia called the clinic’s day and night services “a lifeline for families” in the Mid-Valley. County Commissioner David Fuentes lauded Mercedes and Weslaco leaders for working together to improve health care in the area.
“People are utilizing this facility,” Fuentes said. “They’re using it and it continues to grow.”
The family health center is in part a teaching facility as medical students treat patients under the supervision of practicing physicians on the UTRGV School of Medicine staff. It is hoped the aspiring doctors develop a connection to the Valley and will choose to practice medicine in the region. Knapp Medical is also a teaching hospital for UTRGV medical students and its connection to the Mercedes clinic is part of that process.
Providing Access
Valdes, the Knapp medical director, highlighted the new services offered at the Mid Valley Urgent Care wing of the family health center in Mercedes.
“We have labs, X-rays, there is a lot we can do here,” he said.
Valdes sees the expansion of services in Mercedes as a benefit for not only that community but for rural residents in nearby communities who have had to travel to Weslaco or Harlingen and hospitals in those cities for minor medical emergencies.
“It’s still best to go to a hospital for something that’s major,” he said. “If it’s something we can treat here, it’s an option to going to a big hospital that many times is busier and further away.”
Urgent care is available at the Mercedes clinic from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. during weekdays and 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekends.
