Mary Sterhan, Greater Valley Health Center’s CEO since 2019, held up a microphone while standing in front of the new facility for a ribbon cutting ceremony on Wednesday afternoon. She started to tear up, collecting herself before speaking.
“My job, if I choose to accept it, is not to cry during this time, which everyone knows I’m kind of prone to do,” Sterhan said. “But it’s an important message, so I want it to be clear, and I want folks to be able to hear it. This is the final stop for me in a long career of healthcare.”
Moving the community center’s Kalispell services into a new space, all under the same roof, is the last big action item for Sterhan. She’s retiring at the end of the year to spend more time with family in Helena, a particularly “bittersweet” feeling in light of the opening a new chapter by centralizing their services. Up until now, center services and administration have been spread out among three buildings – behavioral health in one, billing in another, and dental, medical and care management in a third.
Greater Valley providers started seeing patients in the new building on Sept. 29. Patient services were minimally disturbed during the moving process, Sterhan said, with medical services shutting down for one day and dental services for a week. Since the move, providers have been seamlessly connecting patients with other in-house services on the same day.
“I think initially there was a bit of I guess, shell shock a little bit about it being a new space and finding things,” Sterhan said. “But I think our team did a great job of preparing everyone. We had a lot of things ready.”
The community center has been on the search for a central location since it left the umbrella of Flathead County in 2021. When issues around funding such a project arose in 2024, center staff reached out to Glacier Bank to help finance the facility.
All told, the center’s patient population has grown from seeing 4,000 people in 2018 to 9,986 patients in 2024. Sterhan expects that number to surpass 10,000 by the end of this year.
Community health centers see around 10% of the nation’s population, disproportionally serving low-income and rural residents, according to data from the KFF Health Institute. Medicaid is also a primary revenue source for community health centers, including for Greater Valley.
With additional work requirements on the horizon to qualify for Medicaid due to provisions in the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” Greater Valley staff has also been mapping out ways to help patients jump through the additional hoops. New patient navigators will assist people in filling out the necessary paperwork to apply for Medicaid and keep them approved, along with connecting them to other resources such as housing and transportation. Patient navigators will also be able to help schedule appointments inside Greater Valley or make connections elsewhere, Sterhan said.
“It’s the idea of a one-stop shop,” she said. “What we want to do is have patients feel like they can come to us and we’re going to help them either by providing the resource or connecting them to the resource, because a lot of times people just don’t know what’s available.”
In the new building, patient navigators have six rooms they can host private conversations with patients. They’ll also be available to answers questions over the phone.
Kyle Waller and his wife have lived in Flathead Valley for the past four years. On the lookout for a new primary care provider, they recently called and secured an appointment with a one at Greater Valley with ease. Their first day at the community health center happened to be on the day of the grand opening ceremony.
“It’s really clean, it’s really nice, and that kind of stuff matters actually,” Waller said of the new building and warm reception from center staff.
The new center is located at 1935 Third Ave. E. in south Kalispell, next to Lion Park and the Community Action Partnership of Northwest Montana. The facility was originally built as a U.S. Forest Service building, and after that served as an office space until contractors renovated it for Greater Valley’s use over this past year.
“Actually, this ribbon cutting, for whatever reason, people have actually celebrated it,” Sterhan said of staff taking a moment to celebrate the new facility. “It’s kind of a tangible opportunity I think, to celebrate.”