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AFC Urgent Care: A New Name
But the Same Great Care
Y
ou may already be familiar with Doctors Express, in front of
the Shaler Plaza, as a top-notch, anytime medical provider.
Celebrating its fourth year in business on March 17, it would
be hard not to know about the express care center that serves as a
bridge between your regular physician and the emergency room. But
now, the facility is changing its name to AFC Urgent Care. Other than
that, everything you know and love about it will remain the same.
“Everything is exactly the same except the name,” said owner Dr.
Vince Morreale. “We still have three physicians who have been with
us since basically the beginning, one
who specializes in sports medicine,
one who specializes in family practice
and one who specializes in internal
medicine.”
AFC Urgent Care is the place to
go when you’re too sick to wait for
an appointment with your family
physician or need after-hours care,
but not sick enough to go to an
emergency room. It accepts most
major insurances, including most
UPMC and Highmark plans, and has
reasonable service fees for people
Dr. Alcala, Medical Director
who don’t have insurance.
“We see everything from upper
respiratory infections and the flu to sprains and broken limbs,” Dr.
Morreale said. “With our sports medicine doctor on staff, we see a lot
of knee, shoulder and hip problems.”
Despite being smaller than a hospital, AFC Urgent Care still has
access to cutting-edge technology that can save you money in the
long run. The diagnostic ultrasound machine can find soft tissue
injuries
such as
a torn
muscle or
meniscus,
eliminating
the need
for a costly
and timeconsuming
MRI. The
staff is also
authorized
to perform
DOT and school/sports physicals as well as diagnose and clear
athletes who suffer concussions.
“We’re able to do all of this without you having to sit around in a
hospital waiting room or make a special trip into the city,” Dr. Morreale
said. “Our average wait time is less than 10 minutes. Even if we’re
extremely busy, we’re able to get most people into triage in the first
15 minutes.”
Another time-saving advantage that AFC Urgent Care offers is the
onsite radiology, X-ray and CLIA labs available. Blood work needed for
a diagnosis can be completed in-house while you wait. Also offered
are travel and school vaccinations and STD testing.
In fact, you never need an appointment at AFC Urgent Care.
There are only two instances that Dr. Morreale can think of where
an appointment would be recommended, and those are stem cell
injections and platelet injections, only because the materials needed
for the procedures have to be ordered in advance.
“Other than that, we’re 99 percent walk-ins,” he said. “We’re open
8 a.m. to 8 p.m., 7 days a week, 364 days a year. We’re only closed on
Christmas Day.”
Perhaps the best part about AFC Ur