St. John's opens multiservice Nixa clinic

A grand opening celebration was held May 14 for the three-story, 60,000-square-foot clinic at 940 W. Mt. Vernon.

Services

The clinic has a staff of 120, including six physicians, offering such services as family practice and pediatrics, internal medicine, Ob-Gyn, imaging, lab, mammography and optometry.

There’s also an optical shop, a pharmacy, cardiac and pulmonary rehabilitation and physical therapy, including a walking track.

Optometrist Steven Bartholomew, who relocated from Kansas to work at St. John’s Clinic-Nixa, described the new clinic as a one-stop health care facility.

“We’re just short of a hospital,” he said.

Bartholomew said his patients are excited about St. John’s Clinic-Nixa.

“They were required to drive clear into Springfield,” he said. “The highway is getting more and more congested and so for them to be able to get their eye care locally – they’re really pleased to be able to do that.”

Expansion projects

St. John’s Clinic-Nixa was built at a cost of $7 million.

Dewitt and Associates was the general contractor for the project, AIA Jones/Mayer was the architect and the engineer working on the clinic was Packard Engineering.

Scott said the clinic is just one of St. John’s major expansion projects. The Master Sites and Facilities Project is currently under way on the main campus in Springfield. The Emergency/Trauma Center and the St. John’s Surgery Center are now open. St. John’s Cancer Center has been expanded and the main entrance has been moved to allow for construction to begin on a patient tower that will house 300 beds.

“St. John’s Clinic-Nixa is part of an over $300 million renewal of St. John’s facilities,” St. John’s spokesperson Cora Scott said.

Future plans

Scott said that St. John’s plans to rotate specialists through its new Nixa clinic in the future.

The clinic’s imaging center offers X-rays but eventually will provide MRIs and CAT scans as well.

“There’s room in the facility even for future growth,” she said. “We’ll probably rotate orthopedics, maybe oncology.”

Growing population

St. John’s already has a strong presence in Christian County, comprising St. John’s Clinic-Pediatric Medicine in Nixa, St. John’s Clinic-Ozark and a St. John’s fitness center in the Nixa Community and Aquatics Center.

Some of the physicians now housed at St. John’s Clinic-Nixa were already practicing in Nixa.

The new facility allows them to expand their services, Scott said. St. John’s chose Nixa as the site for its new clinic because of the community’s growing population, according to Scott.

“The entire county is growing,” she said. “We’ll continue to look at counties to the south of Springfield for future growth. Our plans for outreach are basically based on population growth and convenience for patients.”

Business impact

Scott said she’s received calls from people who are interested in opening businesses near the new clinic, and the Nixa Area Chamber of Commerce expects it to have a significant economic impact on the community.

Sharon Whitehill Gray, the chamber’s executive director, said the organization anticipates that Nixa’s daytime population will increase dramatically with the opening of the clinic.

“The clinic will be able to house 300 employees eventually,” Gray said. “The people coming in will hopefully eat here, shop here, buy their gas here and that kind of thing. It’s like planting a seed. It’s going to grow. St. John’s Clinic isn’t an annual plant. It’s going to be there, and things are going to compound around that area, I’m sure.”

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