SMC Family Medicine offers additional primary care options

By CHANSE WATSON

Managing Editor

SMELTERVILLE — In the event of an emergency medical situation, Silver Valley residents have relied upon the hardworking staff at Shoshone Medical Center in Kellogg for many years now. But what if you incur a non-emergency injury or illness and still need to see a doctor? For some time, local options for residents have been limited.

According to the 2017 County Health Rankings annual report, Shoshone County’s ratio of the population with access to primary care physicians is 3,110 residents to one doctor. An ugly statistic when you consider that the state average is 1,560 to one.

Many residents who simply want a check up, feel under the weather, receive a non-life threatening injury, or incur some other non-emergency condition that they want a medical professional’s opinion — have experience with how difficult it is to be seen locally.

According to Lisa Turpin, SMC’s Marketing & Business Development Manager and Medical Staff Coordinator, the few primary care providers in the Silver Valley have been overwhelmed and understaffed for a while now.

“We have three independent-care providers who’s practices are full,” she said. “They’re not accepting any more Medicare patients or certain payers, and they just simply (don’t) have the time to care for the entire community themselves.”

Between suffering from staffing issues to an inability to immediately grow their primary care volume, these providers have been forced to turn away many patients; leaving them to either go to the emergency room (to treat a non-emergency injury or illness) or drive to Coeur d’Alene.

Because of feedback from the SMC board of directors and people in the community, the hospital decided to look into opening their own clinic in early 2017. SMC Chief Executive Officer Jerry Brantz met with the representatives of these overburdened providers and asked if opening a new clinic would help. With the opening of SMC Family Medicine in October 2017, it’s clear what their answers were.

Turpin explains that the purpose of this new clinic, located at 858 Commerce Drive in Smelterville, is to “provide primary care, and potentially walk-in services, to patients in the region who are having a hard time finding a primary care home. Specifically, relating to the fact that we have a severe provider shortage in our region.”

The decision to open SMC Family Medicine was not an easy one, as it required an enormous amount of effort to get it in working order.

“We really didn’t want to open a primary care practice,” Turpin said. “It’s a lot of work, it’s a lot of expense, it’s recruiting people to the area; but there was such a large need that we felt it was the right thing to do for the community.”

One aspect that made the decision a bit easier though was that SMC already had the perfect place to put it — inside the Health and Wellness Center building. The building was already home to a gym and rehabilitation center, but was not utilizing all of the space it had to offer. With already built rooms and a reception area, putting the clinic inside the Wellness Center was an easy decision.

The more difficult challenge to opening the doors, as Turpin mentioned, was recruiting staff to operate it. As the clinic closes in on its first-year anniversary in October, it appears that it will finally have the full staff SMC has wanted for it to grow.

Currently, the only doctor at the clinic, Dr. Robert Lakko has been a member of the medical staff at SMC since September 2015. After working as a hospitalist and wound care provider, he became the Medical Director of SMC Family Medicine in September 2017. Dr. Lakko provides primary care at the clinic, but since he cannot be there on a daily basis, SMC also brought on-board two nurse practitioners to spread out the work load.

Nurse Practitioner Annie Moffett came to SMC Family Medicine in February 2018 and is excited to continue making relationships with people and patients.

“This clinic is in a really good position to help out a lot and I’m excited to be a part of this,” she said. “I feel like it’s a good opportunity for the hospital to be a better part of the community.”

The most recent addition to the clinic is longtime Silver Valley nurse (now nurse practitioner), Teirza Bristow. Bristow recently earned her master’s degree and earned the title of nurse practitioner, but she has been in the field (both in profession and location) for a while.

She worked as a nurse in the Silver Valley (on and off between Mountain Health, now Heritage Health, and SMC) since 1999. With her new position at SMC Family Medicine, Bristow is itching to put her newfound knowledge and skills to use.

“I am just excited to practice everything I have learned (in addition to) my past experience,” she said. “It’s terrifying, but it’s exciting in the same sense. I’m excited to be a ‘grown up.’”

There are plans to add another doctor, who is in the final stage of her application process, to the clinic’s team very soon.

With a full staff just on the horizon, SMC is hopeful in the short term that the clinic will be able to expand its weekday hours, add some Saturday hours, and be able to accommodate walk-ins.

In the long term, Turpin says that a renovation of the space that used to house a dialysis center could be a possibility to expand the clinic further.

SMC Family Medicine can be reached at 208-784-4612 and is HRSA certified through the government, meaning that they operate on a sliding-fee scale and no one can be denied care.