A group of Black doctors have partnered to open Premier Health Urgent Care, which is the first Black-owned urgent care facility in Chicago and the only urgent care clinic in the city’s Southside Hyde Park neighborhood.
The clinic is committed to providing affordable and convenient care for the community and is donating a portion of their profits to the Project Outreach and Prevention (POP) organization, which works to prevent youth violence in Chicago neighborhoods by providing resources, services, and education to assist at-risk teens. In addition to treating a range of walk-in conditions, the center also provides mental health and wellness services.
The founders of Premier Health Urgent Care include board-certified emergency medicine physicians Airron Richardson, MD, MBA, FACEP, and Michael A. McGee, MD, MPH, FACEP, and board-certified trauma surgeon and United States Navy veteran Reuben C. Rutland MD, MBA. The facility was launched in partnership with Dr. Gregory Primus, who was the first African American trained in orthopedic surgery at the University of Chicago and a former Chicago Bears wide receiver.
Dr. Rutland told The Chicago Crusader that the group is happy to fill a community need for accessible urgent care, saying, “I see so many urban professionals who either delay or go without care because of time constraints. No one has 8 hours to wait in the emergency department for a minor illness or the flexibility to wait 3 weeks because their primary care doctor is booked solid. We are here to help fill that gap,” he told the newspaper. “We are not in competition with the doctors’ offices or the emergency department. We are a supplement to them both, to help relieve the stress on those two facilities.”
Premier accepts many major types of insurance and offers services at a fraction of the cost of hospital-affiliated urgent care or emergency rooms. To learn more about Premier Health Urgent Care and its services visit https://premierucchicago.com.
