Ridgefield Has a New Primary Care Clinic, and Saturday Hours

Legacy Medical Group opened on South Royle Road in July with extended weekday hours, weekend mornings, and 22 same-day appointments held open every single day.

Anybody who has tried to find a primary care doctor in Clark County in the last few years knows the drill. You call, you get put on a list, you get offered an appointment in a month, in Vancouver, at 10:40 on a Tuesday, and you take it because what else are you going to do. So a new clinic opening in Ridgefield with actual Saturday hours is not a press release to me. It is a logistics upgrade.

Legacy Health opened Legacy Medical Group — Ridgefield on July 14 at 536 S. Royle Road, Suite 1. It is open now and accepting patients. Dr. Susan Huang, Legacy Health's new president and CEO, was at the opening.

The part you actually needed

The hours are the headline here. Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays, 8 a.m. to noon. That means you can get in before work, after work, or on a weekend, which quietly solves the problem of every parent who has burned a PTO day on a fifteen-minute appointment.

And they are holding at least 22 same-day appointments open every day for urgent and routine needs. Not "call and we'll see." Reserved. That number is the single most useful detail in the whole announcement, and it is the one I would want to hold them to six months from now.

Why here, why now

Legacy's framing is straightforward: Southwest Washington does not have enough primary care and specialty providers to cover what demand is going to look like over the next five to ten years, and Clark County keeps growing. Ridgefield sits about 14 miles north of Vancouver, which makes it a reasonable anchor for people who currently drive south for everything.

We have been the punchline of our own growth story for a while now. New houses, new schools, new roundabouts. Healthcare showing up is the less glamorous version of that, and arguably the more important one.

How the clinic is set up

The clinic runs a team-based model, which in practice means your care is not just one doctor and a prescription pad. Physicians and advanced practice providers work alongside medical assistants, pharmacists, registered nurses, behavioral health clinicians, social workers and case managers.

That behavioral health piece is worth pausing on. Having a mental health clinician embedded in a primary care office, in a town this size, is genuinely a meaningful thing. It removes an entire referral step and a very common excuse to not follow up.

On the technology side, there is online scheduling that connects you to the right person on your team rather than defaulting to whoever has an opening, automated follow-up reminders, alerts when you are overdue for a procedure or preventive screening, and standardized care protocols so what you get is consistent from visit to visit.

I will say the honest thing here: every health system announcement in America includes the phrase "team-based care." What makes this one credible is the same-day appointment number and the Saturday hours. Those are commitments you can measure. The rest is a model, and models are only as good as the staffing behind them.

This is part of a bigger push

The Ridgefield location is one piece of what Legacy is doing across Southwest Washington.

Common questions

536 S. Royle Road, Suite 1, in Ridgefield.

Yes. The clinic opened July 14 and is taking patients now.

Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Saturdays from 8 a.m. to noon.

Neither. It is a primary care clinic that reserves same-day appointments for urgent and routine needs. For an actual emergency, go to an emergency department.

Yes. The clinic uses online scheduling that routes you to the appropriate member of your care team, plus automated reminders for follow-ups and preventive care.

For primary care, potentially. Specialty care is a different conversation, and the provider shortage across Southwest Washington is exactly what Legacy says it is trying to address over the next five to ten years.