“We have noticed there’s an increased desire to have outpatient care coordinated underneath one roof close to the community where people live,” said Dr. Ward Blair, medical director of Kettering Health’s Primary Care Service Line. “Centerville’s a growing and expanding community.”
Set to official open to patients on Feb. 1, the center will offer primary care, heart and vascular, women’s health, and laboratory services. There will also be a midwifery practice at this center, as well as education and wellness opportunities. The anchor of this facility will be Kettering Health’s established Centerville Primary Care, Blair said. Their practice has been in the community since the ‘80s.
The facility, which is currently 22,000 square feet, will have up to 66,000 square feet to expand into if the center’s needs call for additional growth in the future.
“It would just be an organic growth of this space as service needs increased over time,” Blair said.
The facility currently has 30 exam rooms, and with the primary care practice and other services to be offered at the Centerville Health Center, Kettering Health anticipates there will be over 40 physicians and provider staff members at this location.
“Today we are very very pleased and honored to really to plant our flag and support the community of Centerville,” said Kettering Health interim CEO Michael Mewhirter during Friday’s ribbon cutting ceremony. “When you walk through this space, you’re going to be blown away. I certainly was.”
Synergy Building Systems developed the location and has worked with Kettering Health on numerous other locations in the past, according to its website, including health centers and emergency departments in Springboro, Preble County, Beavercreek, and Franklin. Synergy also constructed and developed locations for Dayton Children’s, including its outpatient and urgent care center in Huber Heights and its Child Health Pavilion.
Dr. Jack McCarthy, who has been practicing family medicine in Centerville for 34 years, will be one of the primary care physicians working at the new location. He, along with other providers and staff, will be coming from what was previously known as CenterMed Family Practice, which opened in March 1987.
“It’s been 40 years since I started medical school, and in that time, there’s been unprecedented changes in medicine—the technologies, surgery, radiology, cancer care, pharmaceuticals, I could go on and on—but even though we have all these tools, what really has always held medicine together, the glue, has been primary care,” McCarthy said.
Credit: JIM NOELKER
Credit: JIM NOELKER
Brooks Compton, mayor of Centerville, said the city was fortunate that Kettering Health committed to opening to Centerville Health Center approximately two years ago.
“We had hundreds of calls of interest and comments about what is going to happen with the center, and today that question is answered,” Compton said. “Today as we take care of this ribbon cutting, it’s an important day for your patients, it’s an important day for our community, but it is an important day for the extension of that vision, which the Kettering family started back in the 60s.”
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