Doctors from the emergency department of Mount Sinai just opened a new urgent care center on 91st Street and Columbus Avenue.

“Our Emergency Medicine physicians possess extensive experience in caring for patients of all ages and medical backgrounds,” the center’s website says. “Our Urgent Care Center physicians are the same doctors you might see in an emergency department, however at Mount Sinai Urgent Care, they will be able to see you quickly and with greater privacy in our spacious new facility.”

The new medical center is just the latest in a growing group of private medical offices that handle Upper West Siders’ emergency medical problems when they don’t necessitate a hospital visit. The idea is to get you medical care faster rather than if you had to wait in the emergency room. The Mount Sinai office is open seven days a week and offers X-Rays. Walk-ins are welcome, and most types of insurance are accepted, the center says. The Mount Sinai office says it has something that the other centers don’t: “Unlike other urgent care centers, we have direct access to Mount Sinai’s system of clinical pathology and diagnostic services.”

It also shines a light on a fact about the neighborhood: between Roosevelt on 58th and St. Luke’s on 114th (both owned by the same company), there isn’t a single hospital on the Upper West Side. In fact, I often see ambulances from Lenox Hill on the East Side driving around the Upper West Side picking up patients.

Other urgent care offices in the neighborhood are run by CityMD (91st and Broadway) and Urgent Care Manhattan (69th and Amsterdam).

Photo by Dr. Nicholas Genes.