New Urgent Care Center Opened By Sarasota Memorial Hospital In Venice

SARASOTA, FL — Sarasota Memorial Health Care System opened a new urgent care center — its seventh overall — Monday in south Venice at 8431 Pointe Loop Drive.

The center offers those living near U.S. 41 and Jacaranda Boulevard “a more convenient, less costly place to seek care for minor emergencies and pressing health concerns,” according to a news release from SMH.

“Our urgent care centers fill an important gap by providing immediate care for conditions that can’t wait until the next day or until their next doctor’s appointment, but do not warrant a trip to an emergency room,” Reuben Holland, MD, medical director of SMH’s emergency care and urgent care centers, said. “We stitch up a lot of lacerations, set broken bones and care for many routine ailments, like the common cold, flu, sore throat, chest congestion, cough, ear and sinus infections and urinary infections.”

The new urgent care center replaces a Gulfcoast Medical Group family practice that shut its doors abruptly in 2022 with the closure of ShorePoint Health-Venice. It’s about five miles south of the SMH urgent care center on the Venice Bypass and about five miles north of a medical campus SMH is planning in Wellen Park.

The new medical facilities, along with the new hospital planned on Sumter Boulevard, are part of a multi-year, multi-million-dollar expansion plan approved by the Sarasota County Public Hospital Board to fill the gaps caused by ShorePoint’s closure and address pressing health needs in the growing south county region, SMH said.

Like Sarasota Memorial’s six other urgent care centers, the south Venice location is open daily, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., and is staffed by board-certified emergency and family medicine physicians.

The facility provides care for adults and children 3 months and older for various non-emergency injuries and illness. It also offers flu shots and other vaccinations, and school and executive physicals and testing for COVID-19, as well as walk-in laboratory and X-ray services for those with a referral from a personal physician.