Kalispell Regional Medical Center will build a new primary care and imaging clinic in Columbia Falls, with construction scheduled to begin in October and completion expected in December.
The clinic, which will be staffed with physicians, will perform primary care, urgent care and imaging services. This includes magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), X-ray, ultrasound and computed tomography (CT).
The 8,021-square-foot facility will occupy about one-third of the three-acre property the hospital has owned since 2005. The site is located on U.S. Highway 2, next to Super 1 Foods.
Kalispell Regional’s spokesman Jim Oliverson said the hospital’s board of directors decided it was the right time to develop the property and expand into Columbia Falls. The hospital bought the land for this purpose, he said, anticipating the city’s growth.
Travel time from Columbia Falls and the Canyon to Kalispell for medical appointments was a factor in the decision to build. Oliverson said doctors had received complaints from patients who could not make it up to Kalispell for their appointment because of school or work.
“It’s a long drive for people to come up here and it costs money and probably about equally important, it takes time,” Oliverson said. “People were saying, ‘Why am I driving up to Kalispell?’”
It was a similar reaction from patients who traveled up from Polson for care, he said, which is why KRMC reopened its clinic in Lake County last month. He added that 30 percent of KRMC’s patients come from outside the Flathead Valley.
Another factor in the board’s decision was the economy. Building a new clinic could help put some construction workers back to work, he said, which would in turn put more money back into the community.
The board is also taking advantage of dipping construction and raw material costs, which Oliverson said are probably “as low as we are going to see them.”
With many valley residents cutting back on expenses, Oliverson said having a local clinic for X-rays, primary care and other services could help lower the medical costs for patients.
Federal health care reform also played a part in the decision to open the Columbia Falls clinic, Oliverson noted, because KRMC does not yet know how the impending rules and regulations will affect its operations.
“We thought it was a prudent move to simply protect our existing market,” Oliverson said.
Site work on the project is expected to begin in late September.