On Aug. 5, Vancouver Clinic opened its seventh clinic in the Clark County area in Ridgefield. The 15,400-square-foot clinic at 5515 Pioneer St. offers primary and urgent care, including pediatrics.
“Everything has been going great so far,” said Vancouver Clinic CEO Mark Mantei. “The schedule has already been pretty full; we have a new provider in orientation this week who starts on the 19th; we’re still trying to get the word out that we have urgent care at this location, a lot of people are still driving by and going to the Salmon Creek location for that. Overall, it was a very good first week.”
Mantei said the new clinic was actually completed slightly ahead of schedule, and he said construction actually took a little less than 11 months. The total construction cost of the project was $11.1 million, with a total project cost of $18.3 million. Chastell Ely, marketing and strategic communications director for the Vancouver Clinic, said they are still closing out several portions of the total project budget, so the total may still come down a bit more.
“We had a good two months to actually get everything installed,” Mantei said. “We did a lot of training – the work flow at this clinic is totally different than the other existing clinics. There is also a lot more technology involved, so we had to make sure all of that was working right. I think patients have been pleased so far.”
Maintei said the Ridgefield Vancouver Clinic has quite a few differences that set it apart from the six other locations. One major thing is that this clinic was designed with “the patient in the center.”
“You’ll notice a lot of differences in the configuration of how the exam rooms are set up, mostly to promote confidentiality,” Mantei said. “Little things, like the fact that there’s a scale in every room, a central check-in with dividers to keep your information as confidential as possible, etc.”
“On the technology side, we’re using a new system that enters all of a patient’s vitals in automatically – one touch and all of the vitals are taken care of and go right into the computer,” Mantei continued. “There’s less of a chance of error, and it’s quicker. We also have a new feature, if you’re a MyChart user, you can bring up a barcode on your phone that checks you in. You just scan it once you’re in the facility and it checks you in.”
Another notable difference at the new Ridgefield location that Mantei pointed out is the different workspace. He said the doctors don’t have separate offices, instead they are all in one area working with the team. Mantei said people have seemed to enjoy that, and that it’s very helpful when a doctor needs help with something, they don’t need to run around and look for someone.
“Also, if you go in the team space, we have video monitors that show the status of each exam room,” Mantei said. “If a patient is waiting for a lab test or needs an X-ray, the computer keeps track of all that. We’re able to see how quickly we perform.”
Mantei stressed that they want people to know that urgent care is offered at the Ridgefield Vancouver Clinic, and is open seven days a week at 7 a.m. Urgent care is open Monday-Friday until 8 p.m., and until 5 p.m. on weekends and holidays.
Vancouver Clinic at the Columbia Palisades site
Now that the Ridgefield Vancouver Clinic is open, Mantei and the rest of the Vancouver Clinic team are looking ahead to Vancouver Clinic’s eighth location – Vancouver Clinic at the Columbia Palisades site, off of 192nd Avenue.
In June, Vancouver Clinic purchased 4.41 acres in the Columbia Palisades development, on the edge of Camas in East Vancouver. This past week, Mantei said they were just waiting for approval from the board of directors to move forward with the project. Once it’s approved Mantei said they could break ground on the project as early as September, with a possible opening date around Thanksgiving of 2020.
Phase 1 of the project will have two floors with approximately 26,400 square feet for urgent care, family medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics, ophthalmology, lab and imaging.
“The only ophthalmology we have right now is at the Salmon Creek location, so we wanted to offer something to the East Clark County population,” Mantei said. “This new location will be configured a lot like the Ridgefield location, all of the same features will apply there.”
Phase 2 has the potential to expand the building for an additional 30,000 square feet of clinical space. There is currently no estimated timeline for Phase 2.
As for future expansion and projects, Mantei said they are developing a potential project expansion at the existing Salmon Creek location, and they also recently garnered approval to build a new Ambulatory Surgery Center through the state.
“We’ll see if that project’s moving ahead by the end of the year,” he said.
