The opening of UAB Medicine – Leeds is not only viewed by the city as a tremendous addition, but the company also believes its arrival marks the start of something big.

On Oct. 20, City of Leeds and Chamber of Commerce members joined representatives from University of Alabama at Birmingham Medicine to cut the ribbon on the new, 17,000-square-foot medical clinic off I-20 on Rex Lake Road. At $7 million, the facility represents a massive investment in East Jefferson County, and UAB believes it will pay off in a number of ways.

“This allows [UAB] to open up the whole I-20 corridor to treatment options that were only available in downtown Birmingham,” said Dr. Stephen Russell, lead physician at UAB Medicine-Leeds. “UAB’s main campus has patients now who drive from Talladega and Anniston — even from across the Georgia line. Now, they can stop here for care that’s worthy of the UAB name.”

Russell, who’s been with UAB since 2007, has also been the lead physician at the former UAB-Medicine – Moody since that time. The former location has been vacated with the opening of the new facility, and all equipment relocated.

The new facility was designed by Pell City’s Russ Realmuto of Birchfield, Penuel and Associates, who also designed St. Vincent’s St. Clair. Inside, it features a modern design accented heavily with warm tones. Specifically, a UAB representative said inspiration came from the clinic’s proximity to Bass Pro Shops across the street.

About half the new building has been dedicated to primary care, where two physicians and two nurse practitioners will see patients. Manager Kristi Hall said specialists will also rotate regularly in the clinic, which could prevent patients from East Alabama from traveling into the city for specialized care.

Hall said the clinic’s clientele in Moody was 60 percent adult and 40 percent children, but with additions to capability at the new clinic she expects the number of pediatric patients to grow rapidly.

With the other half of the facility, UAB has invested heavily in imaging. Some of the equipment at UAB Medicine – Leeds, according to UAB Director of Radiology Jeff McGough, is more state-of-the-art than equipment installed in the Kirklin Clinic in Birmingham.

Take for example the GE Revolution CT scanner, which, according to a UAB release, “will let us obtain high-resolution images extremely quickly at a low radiation dose, making it ideal for pediatric patients. The scanner also incorporates features that enable cardiac imaging and improve the clarity of images in patients with metallic orthopedic implants.”

McGough, translating, said that means the CT scanner at the Leeds facility is quick enough to fully scan a child in between squirms and can provide 256 cross-sections of a heart between beats.

“Downtown, during a CT scan, a physician and nurse are in the room with a heart patient to provide sedation to slow the heart,” McGough said. “That’s just not needed with this machine.”

The imaging side of UAB Medicine – Leeds includes a host of other top-quality tech. Besides the CT, there’s a 1.5 Tesla GE MRI and two digital X-ray rooms. The facility also includes a women’s center with digital mammography and bone-density scanning and ultrasound equipment.

The imaging department, McGough said, is currently in a testing phase and will open shortly after the primary care clinic. This is due to the high volume of images UAB anticipates it will be sending from Leeds to radiologists in downtown Birmingham for review each day.

McGough said UAB expects to perform more than 25 CT scans a day at the Leeds facility, in part because patients can now be deferred away from the Main Campus to have imaging performed in Leeds. Because of that, AT&T and Windstream were called on to improve the fiber-optics connections in the area.

“Hopefully everything ends up smooth,” McGough said.

For the City of Leeds, the ribbon cutting “literally represents years of work,” Mayor David Miller said.

For the past five years, Miller said, Leeds has been devoid of primary medical care, even though it had been served for approximately the last century by multiple clinics and a hospital.

“It was one of the first things we started working on when we came into office in November 2012,” Miller said. “We contacted UAB and told them there was a need here.”

Since then, Rex Lake Road has seen rapid development, especially from medical entities. Brookwood Primary care held its ribbon cutting this month, Drayer Physical Therapy opened earlier this year and Lemak Sports Medicine is expected to open soon.

“With a 500-600 home subdivision as well as a new school planned for the area, you’ve got a destination here now,” Miller said.

UAB-Medicine – Leeds Primary Care is expected to open Nov. 2. Representatives anticipate the Imaging Facility will open shortly after, approximately on Nov. 11.