A new emergency care clinic soon will open in Hinesville at the corner of East Oglethorpe Highway and Gen. Stewart Way. According to Hannah Paquette, marketing director for Georgia Emergency Associates, the South Georgia Immediate Care Center will start seeing patients in Hinesville on Nov. 15.

In association with the St. Joseph/Candler Health System, the GEA, which was founded by Dr. Brian J. Kornblatt in 1994, has three other South Georgia Immediate Care Centers in Savannah, Garden City and Statesboro, she said.

“We will begin seeing patients on Nov. 15,” Paquette said. “Then we’ll have a grand-opening ceremony with a ribbon cutting through the chamber of commerce on Dec. 1.”

The marketing director said the goal of South Georgia Immediate Care Centers is to provide an alternative to the long lines in hospital emergency rooms by providing emergency physician services.

“Anything that doesn’t require a trip to the hospital ER, we’re equipped to handle it,” she said.

Noting the new clinic is open to walk-ins, she said its board-certified doctors and professional medical staff are ready to treat a variety of medical conditions and provide a litany of services, including physician exams; work, school and sports physicals; workers’ compensation and case management; minor surgery; laceration repairs; in-house diagnostic laboratory reports; digital radiology reports; EKGs; audiograms; pulmonary function tests; drug screens; and most non-life threatening illnesses and injuries.

Paquette said the clinic’s extended weekday operating hours are 9 a.m.-8 p.m., and it is open on weekends from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturdays and from noon-5 p.m. Sundays. Children as young as 9 months old can be seen, she added.

“We also try to accommodate our female patients who prefer a female health-care provider,” Paquette explained. “If we don’t have a female doctor at a particular clinic, we’ll at least have a female (physician’s assistant) on staff there.”

South Georgia Immediate Care accepts most insurance plans, including TriCare and Medicare, Paquette said.