HealthEast has opened a stand-alone clinic amid the retail bustle of Woodbury's Commerce Hill district, part of a major expansion and a shuffle of space that eventually will make room for the city's first radiation treatment center.
The opening of the 18,000-square-foot HealthEast Clinic-Tamarack last week near the SuperTarget also signifies the latest addition to Woodbury's burgeoning health care developments.
Just a week earlier, Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota opened its new 20,000-square-foot clinic near the intersection of Tamarack Road and Bielenberg Drive off Interstate 494.
HealthEast has had a clinic at its Woodwinds Hospital campus site in the western part of the city. But a need to expand that landlocked clinic, plus make room for the new Cancer Care Center due to open next spring, set the planning process in motion, said Len Kaiser, director of network development for HealthEast.
About half of the current family medicine clinicians and pediatricians have moved to the new site at 9900 Tamarack Road, while the rest will remain at the Woodwinds site.
The new clinic offers more parking, larger exam rooms and a soothing environment, plus such special touches as natural lighting and a fireplace in the waiting area. It's all part of a conscious effort, Kaiser said, to make the clinic feel less, well, clinical, and take the stress out of visiting the doctor.
Less obvious to patients, he pointed out, are workstations that are clustered together for efficiency and out of view to reduce commotion and to better protect privacy. Even the heating and ventilation system is designed to muffle noise and keep sounds from traveling between rooms.
The new clinic is about 3 miles east of Woodwinds Health Campus.