New VA Clinic Opens Doors in North Kalispell
The expanded clinic includes a physical therapy gym and audiology exam rooms
By Zoë Buhrmaster
Kalispell’s Veterans Affairs clinic has a new home off Reserve Place featuring a large, dedicated parking lot and a 22,000-square-foot facility, which is a 39% increase in size from the old clinic off Three Mile Drive.
VA staff began seeing patients at the new location mid-December, with an official grand opening ceremony, ribbon cutting and tour on Jan. 30. The new layout includes a 2,000-square-foot physical therapy gym and three dedicated audiology exam rooms, along with dedicated exam rooms for female veterans and a mental health wing.
“As our veteran population ages, there’s so many support services that they need,” Kim Adkins, acting medical center director for Montana’s VA system, said. “We in Montana have focused very heavily on physical therapy and audiology, because those are things that almost all of our older veterans need.”
The VA is currently in the process of hiring a physical therapist. It will be the first time the Kalispell clinic has had their own PT helping to create a continuity of care, Megan Tarver, a registered nurse at Kalispell’s VA since 2020, said.
“We have a ton [of patients] that we have to send out to the community,” Tarver said. “We’re just trying to get them to come here and have that continuity so if something happens their provider and care team is here in the building.”
Veteran Jim Pudelka was one of the first patients to visit the clinic in December. With spinal stenosis and a variety of other physical ailments, Pudelka has been in physical therapy for the past year and is looking forward to having more services under one roof.
“There’s definitely more parking and there’s more room. I’m just waiting to see how they’re going to expand it,” Pudelka said, noting the new physical therapy gym.
The new layout is designed to follow the VA’s Patient Aligned Care Team (PACT) model. Each team is made up of a doctor, Registered Nurse (RN), Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN), and a scheduler. The clinic currently has five teams with each team responsible for around 1,200 patients. With the addition of more space in the larger building, VA staff hope to add a sixth PACT team in the future.
Montana VA currently serves over 49,000 enrolled veterans. Since 2020, multiple new clinics have opened up across the state to meet the needs of the veteran population, which is both aging and growing as more veterans move to Montana, Adkins said. Kalispell’s new clinic allows VA staff the ability to see up to 7,000 patients, around 1,500 more than the clinic currently sees.
“There are veterans out there that have never used the VA, because they’re like, ‘oh I have insurance I don’t need it, I don’t want to take up somebody’s spot,” Adkins said. “It’s your spot too, right? We want to just encourage that market penetration to make sure they all get registered because as they get older, they’re going to need us. And we want to be here to serve them.”
