Local pediatric clinic now offering specialized care through Primary Children’s Hospital
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IDAHO FALLS – Many families in eastern Idaho have benefitted from services offered at Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City, but now some of those services are being offered in Idaho Falls.
Just 4 Kids Urgent Care, a clinic in Idaho Falls specializing in pediatric medical care, is now a collaborative partner with Primary Children’s Hospital. This partnership brings subspecialists in pediatric care to eastern Idaho. They will treat patients locally who will no longer need to take a trip to the Utah-based hospital.
“Primary Children’s Hospital has always considered east Idaho as part of the area we serve,” Ryan Christensen, a spokesman for Primary Children’s, tells EastIdahoNews.com. “We believe that if we can get to the patient to provide care in their home community, that is the right thing to do.”
An expansion to the building on 3320 South 25th East now includes 1,700 square feet of additional space to provide specialized care in urology and cardiology. Christensen says gastroenterology and neurology specialists are currently seeing patients in Pocatello full-time and are seeing patients in Idaho Falls on a rotating basis, but that will soon be changing. They will also open a colo-rectal clinic with TeleHealth services, which will allow patients to have a live video chat with a medical provider in Salt Lake.
“(TeleHealth) has proven to be an effective and safe way to provide care, without the patient needing to come all the way to Salt Lake,” says Christensen. “As we get more requests for these (specialized services), we will try our best to send more (specialists) up there now that we have the full-time space to do that.”
Through the partnership, they offer adult congenital cardiology services as well.
Christensen says Primary Children’s Hospital often seeks out physician partners to provide more specialized care. When they approached Just 4 Kids Urgent Care five or six months ago, Christensen says they knew it was a good fit.
“If you’ve been to (Just 4 Kids), you know it’s extraordinary. It feels just like you’re at Primary Children’s Hospital,” says Christensen.
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Just 4 Kids opened last March and was designed with kids in mind. Dr. Aaron Gardner started the clinic to provide pediatric care that bridges health care gaps.
“For ourselves and most of the people we knew, the kids got sick after hours,” Gardner told us last year. “We recognized there was a need – a space between the pediatrician’s office and the emergency department.”
Just 4 Kids provides care for kids who need emergency medical attention, but Travis Gardner, the clinic’s vice president, says they are not an emergency room and do not perform surgeries.
“We’re here to support primary care doctors. When they are booked or unavailable on weekends, holidays, or evenings, that’s our market,” Gardner says. “No appointment is necessary.”
Just 4 Kids Urgent Care is open Monday through Friday from noon until 11 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. If you take your child to your primary care doctor and they need to see a specialist in one of the above-mentioned areas, you can schedule an appointment by calling (801) 213-3599.
“We’re excited to support (Primary Children’s). We operate as two distinct, separate entities, but it’s fun to support the cause and do everything we can to improve pediatric care in the area,” says Gardner.