(Spirit Lake)– If the attendance at a series of informational meetings on the community-based outreach clinic the Veterans Administration is locating in Spirit Lake is any indication, that clinic is going to be a busy place.
More than 200 people attended one such meeting Thursday in Spirit Lake. And Pam Harris, Acting Assistant Director and Community Out-Based Clinic Cooridnator for the V-A in Sioux Falls, says they’ve been getting strong turnouts at other meetings in the region.
Harris says the Spirit Lake clinic will serve veterans in an eight-county area of northwest Iowa southwest Minnesota when its doors open July 1st.
Harris says veterans will have a choice to either continue their care in Sioux Falls or to transfer to the Spirit Lake location. She says the Spirit Lake clinic will include eight exam rooms and will provide only basic family medicine with not specialties, emergency or urgent care. Veterans requiring those services will still have to go to Sioux Falls. The Spirit Lake location will also offer some home-based care.
Even with the 1,500 veterans the Spirit Lake clinic is expected to serve at the onset, Harris says they’re confident the staffing level of one each of a doctor, nurse practitioner/Physian Assistant, Registered Nurse, Psychiatrist, Lab Technician and a clerical person will be adequate. She says they will definitely expand personnel and the facility itself should projections of patient volume growing to 3,800 in three years come true.
Harris says local veterans currently served by the Sioux Falls V-A will receive letters in early March explaining how they may transfer care to the Spirit Lake clinic.
The Spirit Lake clinic will be open Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. The 5,500 square-foot facility will be located in the new strip mall at 1310 Lake Street.
