Hunter Health Clinic is getting ready to move into a new, larger space on Grove Street in Wichita.
In order to expand its patient capacity, Hunter Health built the $6 million medical facility to replace its current safety-net clinic at the same location.
The new health care facility is 21,000 square feet, roughly double the size of the current building. Hunter Health CEO Amy Feimer describes it as patient-centered.
"We serve a population that has many barriers to accessing quality, affordable health care," she says. "So our philosophy with this new building was to incorporate as many primary care services under one roof as possible."
Feimer says patients often don't have transportation or the flexibility to take time off work to get the health care they need. With the extra space in the new building, Hunter Health is adding more services, including optometry, radiology and an on-site pharmacy.
Feimer says Hunter Health has outgrown the current Grove Street clinic, which is a former strip mall and had no room to expand. She says from the time it opened at 8 a.m. to when it closed at 10 p.m., the clinic was running at capacity.
Hunter Health has three clinics in Wichita that provide medical, dental and behavioral health services to anyone who needs them, regardless of whether a patient has insurance coverage. Services are offered on a sliding fee scale.
The centrally located Grove Street clinic serves the majority of Hunter Health’s 13,500 patients each year.
The Grove Street clinic will close Friday for the move, and re-open for business in the new facility on Monday, April 30.
A new vision clinic will open there this summer. Hunter Health is partnering with Wichita-based Envision to help patients whose vision can’t be corrected by prescription eyeglasses, contact lenses or surgery learn how to live and thrive independently.
Envision, founded in 1933, promotes advocacy and independence for those who are blind or low vision. It is one of the largest employers of individuals with vision loss in the nation.
“Lack of insurance stops so many individuals from receiving routine eye examinations that are essential to overall health and well-being," Feimer says. "With this partnership, we are changing that reality and making sure our patients have access to affordable, quality vision care."
Hunter Health, founded in 1976, was Kansas’s first Federally Qualified Health Center and is the only Urban Indian Health Center in the state.
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Follow Deborah Shaar on Twitter @deborahshaar.
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