by Jessica Pasley
Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt continues to lead the way in providing medical care closer to home with the opening of its sixth after-hours clinic in Smyrna on April 1.
Located in the current Vanderbilt Children’s Clinic Smyrna primary care practice at 515 Stonecrest Parkway, the after-hours clinic will provide walk-in care for children of all ages when most pediatricians’ offices have closed for the day, and on weekends.
“Smyrna has always been an area of interest since we started our after-hours locations,” said Chris Westbrook, MSHA, MBA, director of Children’s Hospital Off-Site and After-Hours Clinics.
“We are seeing more and more families from that area travel to the Murfreesboro practice and other locations, and it was time for us to bring this level of care closer to home for these families.
“We also listened to our existing patient families receiving their primary care from the current Smyrna practice, who have asked for an after-hours clinic in their community. We anticipate that this site will have a lot of volume.”
The Vanderbilt Children’s After-Hours Clinic will be open seven days a week, including holidays.
The hours are Monday-Friday, 6-9:30 p.m., and 12:30-7:30 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.
Vanderbilt Health board-certified pediatricians will staff the clinic and treat illnesses such as fever, sore throat, asthma, splinting and wounds. No appointment is necessary, but it is recommended that parents call their child’s regular primary care physician first.
The Vanderbilt Children’s After-Hours Clinic in Smyrna joins after-hours clinics in Mt. Juliet, Hendersonville, Brentwood, Spring Hill and Murfreesboro. n
The Smyrna clinic is the newest addition to Children’s Hospital’s expanding footprint in Rutherford County.
In 2018, the hospital broke ground for a 37,500 -square-foot, single-story facility that will feature 22 multispecialty clinic rooms, after-hours/urgent care services, a suite of operating rooms, imaging capabilities, audiology booths for hearing tests and procedural areas. The $27.9 million construction project, an outpatient department of Vanderbilt University Medical Center, is expected to be completed in late 2019.