Northern Light Health will close walk-in clinics in Portland, Yarmouth

Photo / William Hall Northern Light Health will close walk-in clinics operated by Mercy Hospital in Yarmouth, shown here, as well as in Portland. A Westbrook clinic is also closing temporarily.

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By William Hall

Northern Light Health, which operates Mercy Hospital in Portland and a group of five walk-in clinics affiliated with the 230-bed care provider, will permanently close two of the clinics next month. A third is being temporarily shuttered.

The Yarmouth facility, at 385 U.S. Route 1, and the clinic at 40 Park Road, Westbrook, will close Nov. 14, according to notices last week from Northern Light. The need to free resources for fighting COVID-19 makes those closures necessary, the health care system said.

“Due to the ongoing need to maintain our comprehensive response to the pandemic, we’ve reallocated resources from our walk-in care services to our COVID-19 response,” Northern Light said in the notice.

Other services at the Yarmouth site, including primary care, laboratory testing and imaging services, will not be affected by the change.

The Westbrook clinic is closing temporarily in order to serve as an appointment-based site for patients with "non-emergency respiratory symptoms," Northern Light said in an email.

On Mercy Hospital’s campus at 175 Fore River Parkway in Portland, another walk-in clinic will close Nov. 14. The space there will be used for other purposes as the hospital consolidates its operations at the campus, Northern Light said.

Construction broke ground earlier this year on an expansion of the site, which was built in 2008. Mercy has since migrated many services there from its 77-year-old facility at 144 State St., Portland. The expansion project is expected to be finished in 2022.

Northern Light Mercy also operates Mercy walk-in clinics in Gorham and Windham, and said those sites are not affected by the changes.

The Brewer-based health care system is the state's second-largest, after MaineHealth, and includes flagship Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor. Northern Light, then called Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems, acquired Mercy Hospital in 2013.

Editor's Note: This story has been updated to reflect that the Westbrook walk-in clinic will close temporarily on Nov. 14.