Wednesday, November 18, 2009

St. Luke’s opens new clinic in Hailey

Facility overshadows its predecessor by 21,000 square feet

---

By TREVON MILLIARD
Express Staff Writer

Photo courtesy of Stacey Doby, St. Luke’s Clinic The newly constructed St. Luke’s Clinic at 450 Aviation Drive in Hailey is three times larger then the clinic it replaced on South Main Street.

The doors of Hailey's $12.7 million St. Luke's Clinic opened to patients for the first time on Monday. The facility will serve many patients who previously had to drive to St. Luke's Wood River Medical Center south of Ketchum.

Stacey Doby, director of physician services at the clinic, said the newly constructed, three-story building at 450 Aviation Drive is about 30,000 square feet, three times larger than the 9,000-square-foot clinic it replaced on South Main Street in Hailey.

With that has come the opportunity to gather more services under one roof.

One of those is St. Luke's Center for Community Health, previously at North Main Street in Hailey, at the opposite end of town from the old clinic. The center provides a variety of community health services for every stage of life, from childbirth and parenting to healthy aging.

Doby said the new clinic also means room for services that were previously offered only at the hospital, such as physical therapy. St. Luke's Elks Rehab, which has an office adjacent to the hospital, has opened a satellite clinic on the second floor of the new clinic.

Like the preceding Hailey clinic, the new clinic won't be offering walk-in urgent care. But, Doby said, 25 appointment spaces are reserved for urgent care every day, though patients must call and make an appointment the same day. The clinic has capacity for 100 appointments a day.

Doby said urgent care appointments increase to between 40 and 50 per day during times such as flu season, when demand is high.

The 21,000 square feet of extra space also means the clinic can provide better value for the ordinary things, such as doctor visits. The clinic will have eight providers, the same number as before, but each provider will have three exam rooms at his or her disposal.

"Before, they had to share," Doby said, adding that scheduling exam rooms used to be a hassle.

And the 24 exam rooms aren't shabby. Each has laminate wood flooring and a flat computer screen attached to the wall on a swinging arm, with a keyboard on its own arm. Doby said the décor was chosen to prevent the sterile feeling of a hospital. Wood is repeatedly used for accenting, and walls are painted welcoming colors such as plum and different tones of green.

Doby said the clinic, which takes up the entire first floor, was created in four identical pods, with two providers per pod.

"The building is a mirror of itself," she said, adding that the essentials—such as X-ray services and the laboratory—are in the center for easy access from all pods.

The circular look is repeated at the check-in desk, which is in itself a circle with receptionists sitting inside it.

Trevon Milliard: tmilliard@mtexpress.com