EUGENE, Ore. — Valley River Pediatric Priority Care Clinic is about to expand its kid-centered urgent care, open seven days a week as of Sept. 1.
PeaceHealth said it’s been a long-term goal, and it’s finally hired the staff they need to make the change.
Gold Meadows sat down with PeaceHealth’s Children’s Services Medical Director and pediatrician Dr. Serena Black to discuss the clinic and the new hours.
GM: “You all had a soft opening for a new urgent care just for children. How did you come up with this idea?”
SB: “It is a vision of our pediatrics group for many years, actually, to have a pediatric-centered immediate care style clinic in town. And it’s taken us a while to fully staff it and be able to be open seven days a week and to have a space carved out where we could have more of an urgent care style clinic. But we are very excited to do a soft open and begin serving patients a little over a year ago and now to be ready to be fully open to the community seven days a week with extended evening and weekend hours.”
GM: “Why an urgent care for children?”
SB: “Kids are anxious sometimes about procedures. They’re coming in with often really simple problems like cough, fever, some of those kinds of things. But creating a space where they can be comfortable with a team that’s really adept at providing a child-centered experience from check-in and the waiting area all the way through to the physical exam. Having a pediatric-centered urgent care where that’s all we do is a really nice opportunity to create that type of environment for kids. Initially when we opened, we were not able to staff it seven days a week because we were recruiting new pediatricians to come and work at the clinic. We have some of our doctors who’ve been in the community for a long time who are covering shifts there, but we’ve also brought some new providers into the community that are pediatricians but have more of an urgent care background.”
GM: “How are you able to improve wait times?”
SB: “If you are a PeaceHealth established patient, you can schedule an appointment directly through the online portal, you can call the phone number that’s available and that is something that can get you an appointment that way and a triage nurse, so they can sort of walk you through, is it appropriate for this clinic? And so that can get you an appointment scheduled. We also are taking walk-ins and we are open to all community members, so you don’t have to be a PeaceHealth patient to come and the appointments are scheduled every 20 minutes. We take lots of different types of insurance, over 30 different types of insurance. We will help people with financial plans. We are billing a clinic visit as opposed to an urgent care visit. So the cost is slightly less. Those who have come in have given us really positive feedback about efficiency, about the breadth of service that we offer about it being a really kid centered and friendly experience. We want them to receive care that’s really specific for them.”
At full staff, the Pediatric Priority Care Clinic has six pediatricians.
The clinic treats children up through age 17 and is open from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.
It’s located at 1400 Valley River Dr., Suite 110, Eugene, and can be reached at 541-222-7370.
date: 2025-08-16 04:30:00