Immediate care clinic opens on North Avenue

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Gottlieb Memorial Hospital President Trish Cassidy joins Father Gregory Wojcik, of Sacred Heart parish and Oak Park resident hospital chaplain Jorge Maldonado as they offer a blessing over the new Gottlieb Center for Immediate Care at River Forest on Monday.

Updated: March 3, 2012 8:41AM

With formal blessings, a tour and sincere thanks for unseasonably warm weather, officials of the Loyola Healthcare System and dozens of guests opened their new state-of-the-art Gottlieb Center for Immediate Care at River Forest on Monday.

The nearly 10,000-square-foot facility, located on the site of the old Plunkett’s Furniture store at 7617 W. North Ave. officially opens for business Feb. 13, with a 17-person staff.

Later this spring, family practice and internal medicine physicians and obstetrician/gynecologists will begin seeing patients there.

Besides an ultra-modern open MRI, the facility will offer X-ray and other imaging that can be communicated seamlessly to doctors off-site.

“This is truly our first integrated site,” Gottlieb Memorial Hospital President Trish Cassidy said.

Cassidy said Loyola-Gottlieb’s research showed a need and demand for a local immediate care facility. She noted that Loyola-Gottlieb’s two other immediate care facilities, in far south suburban Homer Glen and Burr Ridge “both exceeded our expectations for demand.”

“We believe will fill (an) unmet need in River Forest,” she said.

Cassidy also expressed gratitude for the unseasonably warm weather.

“We originally planned to open last fall,” she told her audience. The considerable anxiety over a potentially frigid Jan. 30 opening abated as pleasantly as the weather Monday.

Loyola hospital chaplain Jorge Maldonado and the Rev. Gregory Wojcik of Sacred Heart Church, who offered blessings for the new building, which is 1.3 miles from Gottlieb Hospital in Melrose Park.