The 85,000-square-feet facility at 721 Miami Chapel Road is slated to open in November 2021.
Credit: JIM NOELKER
Credit: JIM NOELKER
The non-profit’s building will have eight departments under one practice, serving as a “one stop shop” to patients. Services offered include medical, dental, obstetrics and gynecology, behavioral health, psychiatry, pediatrics, infectious diseases, sickle cell clinic and care management.
“We have outgrown everywhere we’ve been. We have such great dedicated patients who love the services that we provide, we knew we needed to find a home for many of them,” said CEO Gina McFarlane-El.
An estimated 600 patients each day will visit the new facility, not counting the 100 who every day are expected to stop by the pharmacy, McFarlane-El said.
The health center will be three times larger than the proposed plan. The plan for a larger facility was first announced in June last year after Five Rivers purchased the Whittier Elementary school building.
Credit: JIM NOELKER
Credit: JIM NOELKER
“This location is actually perfect from where our current locations are, it’s five minutes away, and from an accessibility standpoint for our patients it’s perfect. Miami Valley Hospital is nearby so we can continue to provide other additional services for our patients there too as well,” McFlarlane-El said.
Five Rivers Health Centers is a federally qualified health center, which is designed to be accessible to all patients including for low-income and uninsured patients. The center is governed by a patient-majority board. In return for providing accessible health care, federally-qualified health centers can access some extra government funding sources.
Established in 2012, Five Rivers Health Centers has grown from three locations to 11, and its payroll increased from 77 employees to 245, said McFarlane-El.
Five Rivers, which mostly serves people on Medicaid, had 12,000 patients and 45,000 visits in 2012. Last year, the nonprofit had 29,300 patients with more than 90,000 visits.
Credit: JIM NOELKER
Credit: JIM NOELKER
Five River Health Centers needed better ways to get care to its 28,000 patients and the Edgemont facility is the solution, said president of the board of trustees, Amy Wiedeman. “We are going from 66 exams rooms to 88 exam rooms with this building.”
There will also be a full lab and pharmacy in this building which operations manager, Davenie Breeding, said will help keep patients. “They don’t have to leave to get prescriptions or blood work somewhere else. Sometimes you lose patients because they don’t go get their blood work.”
Earlier this year, Five Rivers partnered with the Dayton Public School to open a a 5,300-square-foot health center at Roosevelt Elementary, 1923 W. Third St. It is equipped with three medical exam rooms, four dental chairs, two vision exam lanes and a room for a behavioral health consultant. The clinic is open to all students in the district.
Cornelius Frolik contributed to this story.
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