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.
New clinics in Woodbury healthy sign for growth
HealthEast and Children's Hospitals, along with other firms, are making the city a medical care destination.
November 7, 2014 at 5:32AM
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.
"We're able to serve the growing east side of Woodbury," Kaiser said. "Most of the growth in Woodbury is east and south of here."
The visibility of the clinic site also was important, he added.
"We've been more deliberate about locating near retail centers," Kaiser said. And the reasons for doing that are similar to why other businesses cluster together: ready access and parking, high visibility and convenience to other amenities. For example, patients at the clinic can fill prescriptions at the nearby SuperTarget.
Cancer Care Center will include the city's first radiation treatment facility. That means cancer patients who often need a daily regimen of radiation won't have to travel as far for that care.
The Legislature in 2007 had imposed a moratorium on adding radiation treatment in the Twin Cities and Duluth after a group of cancer specialists announced plans to build a center in Woodbury. The HealthEast plan does not involve expansion, however, but rather, a transfer of one of its two radiation treatment facilities at St. John's Hospital-Health East in Maplewood to Woodbury. The Legislature approved the plan.
Woodwinds currently offers a medical oncology clinic with chemotherapy/infusion services, but not radiation.
The HealthEast Clinic is the third major health-related expansion project in Woodbury to be completed in recent months.
The Children's Woodbury Clinic moved from Woodwinds Oak Center to its new building at 628 Bielenberg Dr. near the Tamarack Hills retail development.
It offers the same services as it did at the former site, with a full range of pediatric developmental and rehabilitation services, including occupational therapy, physical therapy and speech language pathology. The clinic also will continue to provide diabetes and endocrinology services, as well as pediatric and adolescent gynecology care.
Room to expand
Children's will be leasing all 20,000 square feet in the new building but initially will use only 15,000 square feet, giving the clinic capacity to expand its services.
Meanwhile, construction has been completed on a major expansion of the Woodbury HealthPartners Clinic near the intersection of Seasons Parkway and Radio Drive.
The project entails two building additions — one just more than 11,000 square feet, the other about 1,000 square feet — that will increase the clinic's size from its current 30,000 square feet by more than a third.
The additions include a new clinic and expanded family practices, urgent care and lab services at the clinic, the largest HealthPartners primary clinic.
Jim Anderson • 651-925-5039 Twitter: @StribJAnderson
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