A growing population in Cy–Fair has made way for a changing landscape with new commercial and residential developments sprouting up throughout the area as well as ongoing road improvements. A trend to help serve this suburban sprawl is seen in the opening of dozens of satellite emergency care and imaging centers around the community.
Cy–Fair Medical Center Hospital has opened four satellite urgent and emergency care center locations during the past year to provide a variety of services to patients in the area.
These locations have become more popular to give access to in-network care without the need for residents to leave their neighborhood.
"Cypress Fairbanks Medical Center is opening urgent care and emergency centers in neighborhoods near the hospital to offer services to our patients closer to their homes," said Vicki Rodgers, director of nursing for offsite emergency services. "This offers [patients] the same excellent service offered on the main campus but close to their home with less travel and typically shorter wait times."
Each of Cy–Fair Hospital's recently opened locations also offer mammography screenings and bone densitometry to patients. Other urgent and emergency care centers have been cropping up, providing services from X-rays to EKG screenings to occupational medicine for employer health needs.
As of last year, there were approximately 8,700 urgent care centers throughout the country with an estimated 300 locations in Texas. These urgent care centers are able to provide assorted degrees of care to patients, but the availability of services varies at each center. National walk-in clinic provider NextCare opened a new location off FM 1960 and Jones Road in late 2012.
"Our locations in Houston provide diagnostic labs on-site, so in addition to X-rays and basic tests, we offer complete blood count screenings, which is a very useful diagnostic tool not usually available at primary care offices," said Janelle Brannock, director of public relations.