A New Rural Clinic in Polson is Poised to Help Keep Healthcare Local

Donors, caregivers and hospital administrators broke ground Tuesday on a new rural health clinic by Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Polson. The clinic will have 26 exam rooms and host seven primary care physicians, five behavioral health providers and four visiting specialists from Providence St. Patrick’s Hospital in Missoula.

The clinic represents phase one of a three-phase campaign to increase access to rural healthcare at St. Joseph’s in the southern end of the Flathead Valley. The second phase will entail redesigning the emergency department with a focus on behavioral health and substance use support. The third phase includes creating an MRI suite inside the hospital, moving the machine out of the trailer where it currently resides.

Erin Rumelhart, director of nursing at St. Joseph’s, described a lack of space in the main hospital forcing doctors to dictate their notes in the hallways. In the new building, physicians will have private workspaces, in addition to sharing the clinic with primary care, behavioral care and specialists.

“It eases the way of patients, but also eases the way of caregivers,” Rumelhart said. “Which is nice so that they have optimal work streams that allow for them then to spend the majority of their time in patient care versus having workflows that are disjointed, where you’re having to run from here to there to get labs and not having everything kind of centrally located.”

The cost of the multi-phase project in its entirely is estimated at $31 million. Of the $18 million needed to be raised, donors have already contributed $14 million. Providence Health will cover the remaining costs.

Lake County ranks low on health rankings at 40 out of 47, according to a 2022 county health rankings assessment by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.

Diane Long, a donor and co-chair with Blair Sprunk for the Critical Access Campaign that is helping raise the funds, said that with the nearest hospital in Missoula or Kalispell the clinic will help keep resources local.

“When you think about all the challenges there are with that, like not everybody has a car, not everybody can take the whole day off work to go and see a doctor,” said Long. “It’s really important that the access be right in our community.”

Caryl Perdaems, the chief administrative officer at St. Joseph’s, said the clinic will help keep medical professionals local, along with ensuring better access in a rural area.

“We want to be able to fill the need,” said Perdaems. “We are adding three new primary care providers this year, just to ensure that we’re meeting the need so that patients don’t have to wait for same-day appointments, for months to get into primary care provider, things like that.”

The clinic will sit behind St. Joseph’s main hospital building and is expected to double access to primary care at the Providence Hospital to 7,000 patients a year. Once donors raise the remaining $4 million for the project, they’ll get the ball rolling on the other two phases, Perdaems said.

“We’re steadfast in our mission of caring for the poor and vulnerable,” said Perdaems. “We want to curb as many expenses for patients as possible.”

[email protected]