Windom Area Health making space in Fairmont
Trending
FAIRMONT-- Windom Area Health is working on opening up a new clinic in Fairmont. Through a phased approach, multiple specialty services will be provided with the first starting to be offered in the fall of this year.
The clinic will spread over eight rooms in the Victoria State Crossing Building, in the space that Center for Specialty Care most recently occupied.
While their main hospital is in Windom, there are outreach clinics in Lakefield and Trimont and general surgery in Slayton.
As for why they're moving into the Fairmont area, Dr. Laura Grigereit, who provides general surgery, said, "We're just interested in being here to be of service to people in southwest Minnesota, which is our community where we all live."
Dr. Kendra Kamlitz, who also provides general surgery, added, "We could see the needs that weren't being met as far as healthcare, especially in the Martin County area. We have skillsets that aren't available here and wanted to be able to offer them."
Lori Fett, a Certified Nurse Practitioner specializing in urology, shared that the goal is to keep local resources in the community so that residents don't have to travel so much for care.
"It works a lot better for the elderly population that's definitely on a fixed budget most of the time as well," she said.
The three all live in Martin County and Dr. James Hinshaw, an OB/GYN who will also be seeing patients in Fairmont, lives in Windom where their hospital is located.
While he's lived and worked in various states, including Texas and Montana, Hinshaw said he likes being able to offer services to smaller communities.
"I like a diversified practice. I like to deliver babies and I like doing surgeries. That's the reason I went into OB/GYN," Hinshaw said.
Knowing there was a gap for services in the Fairmont area, Kamlitz said they had been looking at a variety of locations and options and when the Victoria State Crossing space became available, she said they knew it would be a good fit for what they would be able to provide.
"With us being local to this area, we just knew what services were really needed as well," Fett said.
Since taking over the space, they've been working on refreshing it and making some updates to it. While it was previously occupied by a medial business, Kamlitz pointed out that they will be offering different services.
"It was primarily orthopedics before," she explained. "We are looking at offering general surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, urology with additional plans shortly thereafter that."
Some of the future services planned to be added in subsequent phases include primary and acute care, lab and imaging, extended primary and acute care hours and a surgery center.
With that said, they are working on reworking how some of the rooms are currently set up.
Hinshaw will be able to see patients at the Fairmont clinic but birth will take place at their hospital in Windom. Similarly, surgery will not take place in Fairmont to start, but at the hospital as well.
"In terms of procedures and future surgeries we might offer here, that depends on how things are with the remodel," Grigereit said.
Kamlitz added that to start out they'll offer clinic-based procedures like skin biopsies, wound care and other basic procedures. Fett said that, for urology, they'll likely be able to offer cystoscopies in the near future.
With the four providers set to offer services in Fairmont, additional support and nursing staff is also being sought. Employment opportunities can be found on their website at windomareahealth.org.
"As providers we're just really excited to open and make care accessible here and then growing as we can," Grigereit said.
They've been working to make their upcoming presence in the community known through advertising and marketing and they will also have a booth set up at the upcoming Martin County Fair.