White River Junction health clinic expanding with New Hampshire location

Editor’s notice: This story by Nora Doyle-Burr initially appeared in the Valley Information on July 22.

The White River Junction-centered Very good Neighbor Wellbeing Clinic, which supplies professional medical and dental care for uninsured or under-insured men and women in the Upper Valley, has signed a a few-yr lease on a space in Lebanon, New Hampshire, the clinic’s director explained.

“This is some thing that the board has been searching at and preparing for 3 a long time and the ideal location arrived along,” Dana Michalovic, govt director at Superior Neighbor Overall health Clinic and Purple Logan Dental Clinic.

The objective of the new 1,400-square-foot internet site on Hanover Avenue is to boost the range of individuals the clinic can give with healthcare treatment, as effectively as to increase the amount of volunteers, which includes college students from the Geisel School of Drugs at Dartmouth and people at Dartmouth Hitchcock Clinical Centre.

“I consider that the progress will be organic and natural,” Michalovic said. “… This application will construct as demand builds and our potential to recruit volunteers and hire staff (grows).”

Michalovic pointed out that although programs for the Lebanon clinic have been in the performs for yrs, they are coming to fruition at a time when wellness treatment has become progressively really hard to arrive by.

“Access to treatment is quite challenging in the Upper Valley right now,” she reported. “Between Covid and issue accessing treatment — primarily major health and fitness treatment — we have observed an maximize in demand from customers.”

Michalovic claimed she anticipates that the proximity of the new site, 103 Hanover Avenue, to Route 120 and bus stops will aid appeal to new patients, which includes people from Claremont. Sullivan County Transportation introduced a bus route between Lebanon and Claremont final summer season. Presently, a single-quarter of Fantastic Neighbor’s roughly 1,000 individuals are from Hartford and a person-quarter from Lebanon, with the remainder from bordering locations, she stated.

“We actually want to be able to have men and women who dwell outside of these two core cities to be in a position to access us effortlessly,” she claimed.

In addition, acquiring a site in New Hampshire will make it a lot easier for suppliers who are accredited in the Granite Point out to present care, she mentioned.

For numerous many years, Alice Peck Working day Memorial Hospital in Lebanon has authorized Good Neighbor to use room at APD to host satellite clinics, Michalovic mentioned. This new lease presents Fantastic Neighbor a space of its individual.

Originally, the new space will depend on volunteers to be open up with confined several hours, presenting the exact same specialty clinics that at present materialize at APD, Michalovic stated. These clinics include things like dermatology, women’s health and major treatment. The new room also is slated to include things like a suite for ophthalmology. Great Neighbor is organizing to get devices from New London Hospital, which introduced previous summer it would discontinue its ophthalmology service.

Michalovic anticipates it will open up in late September or early Oct, relying on the speed of some renovations to the previous Allstate insurance coverage office environment. She has applied to the city for a developing permit. Options for the space incorporate new flooring, electrical operate and plumbing. These days, she stated, “when it will come to construction there’s just a longer hold out time.”

Dartmouth Health and fitness has supplied a $15,000 donation to aid the new clinic, it declared in a Tuesday press release. The Mascoma Lender Basis also has delivered funding for the challenge, Michalovic mentioned.

“Good Neighbor Health Clinics is a real associate and a crucial asset in the Higher Valley to make confident there is high-high quality, equitable care for all,” Barbara Farnsworth, director of community wellness partnerships at Dartmouth Wellness, reported in the DH launch. “We are very pleased to support their mission and work by way of this donation.”

If all goes as prepared, Michalovic mentioned at the stop of a few decades, “I would envision us renewing that lease.”

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