Grant supports $8M expansion for Jordan Valley Health Center

A planned $8 million expansion of Jordan Valley Community Health Center in center city will enhance the group’s efforts to provide accessible, affordable care.

The federally qualified health center, at 440 E. Tampa St., was founded in 2002 to work with a patient demographic that might otherwise face a difficult time accessing care.

Now, a $5 million capital development grant through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is paying for the bulk of a 30,300-square-foot facility, which will be located where a parking lot now sits due north of the existing facility, said Brooks Miller, president and CEO of Jordan Valley Community Health Center.

“We have another couple acres we purchased two years ago east of our current building that we’re converting into (a new) parking lot,” Miller said.

Clinic officials worked with St. Louis-based Alberici Corp. on the preliminary plans submitted with the grant application, but Miller said the design contract hasn’t yet been officially awarded. He expects a general contractor to be chosen in about a month and a half, with groundbreaking later this summer and project completion by fall 2013.

Miller said additional funding for the project would likely come from loans or tax credits, but that determination hasn’t been made yet.

The expansion would add 46 exam rooms to the roughly 80 in the existing center, Miller said. Plans also call for three dental operatories, two procedure rooms, provider offices, a pharmacy, lab, X-ray services, and seven intake and consulting offices.

There also would be an open-access urgent care clinic, staffed 14 hours a day, six days a week. Miller said the urgent care clinic would work with the same patient demographic as the regular clinic – patients with Medicaid, private insurance, self-pay or on a sliding fee scale – and its downtown location is likely to be a draw for Jordan Valley’s patient base.

“One of the big things is trying to serve as a medical home for the population we serve, keep our patients out of the emergency room, and the only way to do that is convenient access. That’s certainly what we hope to achieve through that service,” Miller said.

In 2011, Jordan Valley had about 102,000 patient visits at the Springfield clinic, Miller said. Those visits helped 35,000 patients, up from 30,000 in 2010, he said. While access is limited for the sliding-fee scale program, and dental patients sometimes have to wait for care, he said center staff tries to work others in as needed. He estimates that about 65 percent of the center’s patients are on Medicaid, and at least 15 percent are on the sliding-fee schedule. Patients with commercial insurance comprise less than 10 percent of the patient base, and the remainder are self-pay, he said.

The expansion seems to be coming just in time.

“The growth of the population we serve is probably passing our ability to address it,” Miller said. “Poverty in southwest Missouri and really, in our nation as a whole, continues to grow.”

Kevin Gipson, director of health for the Springfield-Greene County Health Department and president of the Jordan Valley Community Health Center Board of Directors, said the project’s target completion date coincides with the center’s 10-year anniversary.

“With this building capacity grant, we’re improving access to care for our entire community,” Gipson said in a news release announcing the grant funding. “This grant and subsequent building project will allow Jordan Valley to keep pace with emerging community needs and help provide the traditionally underserved with a health care home.”

This is not the center’s first growth spurt in its history. A Marshfield clinic was added in 2008 and relocated to a 4,500-square-foot site the following year. Also in 2009, the existing 70,000-square-foot, $8.2 million Tampa Street location was completed, facilitating a move from a smaller clinic site on Kearney Street. Last year, the existing center achieved Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design-Gold certification.

The expansion would enable Jordan Valley to add 13 providers to the center’s medical staff, and Miller said those team members likely would be a mix of primary care, pediatric, dental and behavioral health caregivers.

“There’s so much demand, especially for primary care providers and such,” Miller said. “We’ve been fortunate here in Springfield, because there’s an influx of provider population that certainly finds this area appealing, and we hope to continue to build on that.”

In late 2011, for example, Jordan Valley added seven providers – two doctors, a physician assistant, two nurses and two dentists.

Once the additional facility is completed on the Jordan Valley center’s campus, plans are to remodel the existing building’s upper level to expand pediatric and women’s health services. The lower level also would be renovated to accommodate 40 dental chairs and enable the consolidation of the clinic’s dental and oral surgery practices.