WEST LEBANON — A long-awaited urgent care clinic on Route 12A in West Lebanon is expected to open this summer.
ConvenientMD Urgent Care first brought plans to open a clinic in a vacant unit in the building currently occupied by Citizens Bank and AT&T to the Lebanon Zoning Board in 2019.
Seven years later, the urgent care provider has started site preparation work and is hiring staff for a planned opening early this summer, Jennifer Harris, a ConvenientMD spokesperson, said in an email message Wednesday.
The Concord-based urgent care provider that has 17 New Hampshire locations — up from 11 in 2020 — is actively hiring physician assistants, nurse practitioners and radiation technologists for the West Lebanon location, Harris said. Hiring for nurses, EMTs, medical assistants and medical receptionists will take place “closer to opening.” The clinic is expected to have 15 to 20 staff between full-time, part-time and per diem roles.
The clinic is expected to be open daily from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. and treat “a wide range of illnesses and injuries” including colds, flu and broken bones. It will be able to administer stitches, IV fluids, electrocardiograms, labs and X-rays and will offer services such as free flu shots and $25 youth sports physicals.
The plan is to build out nine exam rooms, two triage rooms and an X-ray examination room in the 5,136-square-foot space.
The clinic will be the third non-emergency walk-in health center in Lebanon, joining Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital’s newly created Express Care and ClearChoice MD Urgent Care, which is in a shopping plaza on Miracle Mile.
Elsewhere in the Upper Valley, Dartmouth Health provides similar walk-in services at Valley Regional Hospital in Claremont, Mt. Ascutney Hospital and Health Center in Windsor and New London Hospital.
APD Express Care, which opened in September, “filled a critical need in the Upper Valley, and the response from our community has been overwhelmingly positive since opening,” APD CEO Michael Lynch said in an email statement Wednesday. “We are not concerned about market saturation.”
Because it is integrated into the Dartmouth Health network, Lynch said, APD Express Care offers “the most complete and comprehensive care possible” and results in “timely referrals and test results.”
The ConvenientMD proposal originally came before the Lebanon Zoning Board in 2019 when the urgent care provider requested an exemption to the city’s signage regulations. ConvenientMD requested permission to put 514 square feet of signage around the outside of the building, dwarfing the permitted size of just under 100 square feet.
Representatives for ConvenientMD contended that large visible signage is vital for an urgent care center because many patients drive long distances or are from outside of the area and may be in distress when looking for the clinic, the Valley News reported at the time.
The city ultimately reached a compromise with ConvenientMD in 2020, approving three signs for the clinic, including the largest, at 150 square feet, facing Interstate 89. The decision cleared the way for the clinic to move forward with construction.
Construction started up in 2022 before stalling again.
ConvenientMD has submitted an application for a new construction permit, but the city has not yet issued it, Tiffany Adams, executive assistant for the Planning and Development Department, confirmed Tuesday. Adams said the city already has issued a plumbing permit and that work is now underway.
This story was updated at 10:30 a.m. on Thursday.