New Health Clinic In Polson Aims To Boost Community Care

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - St. Joseph Hospital in Polson broke ground Monday on a new primary health clinic addition that will provide expanded services for the Lake County and Mission Valley community.

I spoke with Megan Beard, Senior Philanthropy Officer for Providence St. Joseph Hospital about the groundbreaking ceremony at the site of the present clinic in Polson.

St. Joseph Hospital in Polson Breaks Ground on New $31 Million Clinic

“We've outgrown our space,” began Beard. “It's been quite a few years. This project is overdue, but we've been dreaming about what the future for St Joe's could look like, and we finally decided to jump in with a fundraising campaign to try to make it happen. This new rural health clinic actually is being funded through philanthropy.”

Beard said the ambitious plan will double the patient and care capacity at St. Joe’s.

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Officials say the Addition Will Double Capacity for Primary Care

“We're going to be able to double our access for primary care, which is really big piece of this,” she said. “So the clinic will house primary care, behavioral health and pediatric services, and it will double our access for almost all of those things.”

Beard described the decision making process that led to the expansion project.

Beard Said 30 Percent of the Polson Community is Not Accessing Healthcare

“We had decided a few years back, based on our community needs assessment, that the thing that our community really needs is better access to primary care, and that lands on us,” she said. “There's at least 30 percent of our community that isn't accessing a physician at all, and we need to do what we can to fix that problem, and we were not able to increase the access in our existing footprint, so the only option was to build something new.”

Beard added more details about the expansion project in Polson.

The New Facility will be 12,000 Square Feet and Cost $32 Million

“This project itself is the first piece of a line of dominoes that are going to really expand access to everything on our campus and really the services that matter the most, which is our primary care emergency department,” she said. “Right now, our emergency (department) is adjacent to the existing clinic, and when those folks move out, it gives us the space to imagine how we want our emergency room to be built. So we're going to re engineer the emergency department following that, as well.”

The new facility will be about 12,000 square feet, with 26 new exam rooms, and the entire project will cost about $32 million. Beard said the plan is to open the new clinic in about 12 months.