Recent strategic planning and two recent property purchases have KVH adjusting its 2016 master site facilities plan. In mid-2017, KVH purchased the 22,000 square foot former Royal Vista skilled nursing facility. More recently, the public hospital district acquired the 36,000 square foot three-story building near Super 1 and Rite Aid.
The KVH Board of Commissioners devoted much of 2017 to developing a new strategic plan for the hospital district. Access to care and community engagement surfaced as key strategic initiatives and the emerging facility plan flowed naturally from that focus on patient and community needs.
The new facility plan is about much more than bricks and mortar; it focuses on improving care processes, consolidating the electronic health record as well as identifying new space for patient services. With these purchases, KVH is able to take advantage of existing community property and to expand more quickly than building new. “Access to care cannot wait for a new building,” said KVH CEO Julie Petersen. It will ultimately provide more square footage at a fraction of the cost estimated for previous plans.
“Recent provider recruitment has been so successful that we do not have adequate space for our incoming providers,” said Petersen. “We have reached the point where our facilities are the limiting factor in being able to care for our community.”
Occupation and expansion into the newly acquired facilities will be staggered as space becomes ready for use, and after KVH implements a new integrated electronic health record that will better consolidate patient health information.
The former Royal Vista facility, now called the KVH Radio Hill Annex, was purchased in mid-2017. This property is located in a residential neighborhood and is most appropriate for low-traffic support services. On November 30, KVH received approval from the City of Ellensburg to begin relocating services to the facility. Home health, hospice, patient billing, and other support functions that are currently located in the KVH 309 Annex at 309 E Mountain View Avenue will be the first to move to the Radio Hill Annex. KVH hopes to invite community partners to consider co-locating at the Radio Hill Annex to create a community health resource center. This would include some external partners such as Hospice Friends.
Vacating the 309 Annex will free up space that is ready to accommodate higher-traffic professional services. This is an ideal location for clinical services.
The acquisition of the three-story building near Super 1 and Rite Aid was finalized on December 11. This building will be known as the KVH Medical Arts Center. Currently, the building is almost completely occupied so no immediate changes are anticipated. In the future, KVH will move some of its existing and emerging clinical services into the building, in addition to the current provider tenants. The Board believes that practicing in such close proximity to other area healthcare providers will foster collaboration and ultimately benefit the patients.
This is in line with the vision that Dr. Byron Haney had when he began construction of the building in 2007. “Our purpose was to retain and expand in town medical specialty care, expand Family Health Care of Ellensburg, offer KVH or DSHS services in a consolidated location and leave room for future healthcare growth. This summer KVH approached me with a desire to acquire this building for their needed expansion. Knowing our initial vision for this community had been realized, we granted KVH their request. We trust this building will bless this community for years to come.” said Dr. Byron Haney, founding physician of Family Health Care of Ellensburg.”
Though decisions have not been made about which services will be moved to the locations suitable for high-traffic professional services, the facilities planning work completed in 2016 will largely be translated to these new locations.