Clinic opening celebrated with open house
Windom Area Health has plans to add services in early 2027
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FAIRMON-- While it officially opened in early October, Windom Area Health's Fairmont Clinic held an open house on Thursday to celebrate its establishment and provide the public with a chance to tour the facility, meet the staff and learn about the clinic's future plans.
Dozens of community members came through and many even showed up before the event officially started at 4 p.m.
Located inside the Victoria State Crossing Building, the clinic spans across eight rooms. As the plan has been to open in phases, to start, services offered include general surgery, obstetrics and gynecology and urology.
While they're just a month in, Outreach and Operations Manager, Leah Jenson, said they've seen quite a few patients in urology and that they're starting to grow a patient base in both general surgery and OBGYN as well.
"We're so excited to continue to add and expand on that," Jenson said.
Future plans include adding primary and acute care, lab and imaging-- which are expected to be added in the early winter of 2027-- and then acute care hours and a surgery center later on in the spring of 2027.
During the open house Jenson confirmed that's still their plan.
"There's so much that goes on in the background so we don't want to give specific dates yet, but we appear to be on target," she said. "We're really focusing on getting the first two phases implemented and them being successful and having the tools in place to provide great service for those."
In the background though, they'll be looking at how to bring phase three forward, which will allow them to do surgeries like colonoscopies on site.
To start in the near future with phase two though, an X-ray lab will be on site.
The space where this will be was shown to those who took the tour and they were also able to see the other rooms where services like clinic-based procedures are done.
Some of the five main providers of the Fairmont Clinic, Dr. Laura Grigereit, Lori Fett, CNP, Dr. Kendra Kamlitz and Dr. James Hinshaw, and their new Chief Medical Officer, Dr. AJ Yusuf, who will provide primary and acute care when phase two is implemented, were also on site Thursday to meet visitors and answer any questions.
Speaking to why this was an important feature of the open house, Jenson said, "Not everyone wants to go seek a healthcare provider, that can be daunting, but it's nice to be able to do it locally when you need to."
The Fairmont Area Chamber of Commerce Ambassadors were also at the open house to do a ribbon cutting in order to celebrate the presence of the new business in Fairmont.
Chamber President Miranda Tulowetzke said, "Every new business is worth celebrating and our goal as the chamber is to have a healthy business environment in Fairmont."
She added, "rural healthcare is a major topic and much needed so we're happy to have more people wanting to invest and see a vision for growth in Fairmont."
Tulowetzke commented on the good turnout that the open house had, which Jenson said they were very pleased with.
"The outpouring of support is overwhelmingly wonderful," Jenson said. "I am very touched by the amount of people that showed up and are so thankful to have us here. That's been fantastic and we're so happy about it."