Urgent Care Center Coming to Milford

An urgent care center plans to be up and running at the old Blockbuster location on Cherry Street by late fall.

"There's definitely a need for it," Tina LaRiviere, associate director of operations at ASAP Urgent Care, said on-site Thursday.

"The ERs are so overcrowded," she said. "Now people can benefit (because) they won't have to wait four or five hours in a waiting room."

LaRiviere, however, stressed that the center will not be the place to go for patients with potentially life-threatening symptoms, such as "crushing chest pain."

The walk-in based center plans to have limited testing tools compared to an emergency room, she said. But it will offer EKGs and X-rays.

LaRiviere said the facility expects to start with 10 employees, which will include physicians, a radiologist and a nurse practitioner. She said those hirings have yet to be made.

Copays will be higher than what a patient normally pays his or her primary physician but less than what one would typically pay for a visit to the ER, LaRiviere said.

"We're not here to be primary doctors," she said. "We just want to be there when they aren't."