Practice moves back into neighborhood

A 40-year-old clinic that started out as a private practice and eventually moved to the city’s medical center has found its newest home among neighborhoods and schools.

“I felt it was a good idea to get away from the medical hill, to get back into the community” said Dr. Dennis Winkel, who began Northwest Family Medicine in 1977.

In 2010, the practice became a department of Kalispell Regional Healthcare. The primary care facility, which specializes in family care from birth to senior adults, moved from Burns Way to 70 Village Loop this summer.

Winkel said the practice began with a staff of three and himself as the sole provider. Today, the facility has 15 staffers. A fourth provider is set to start next month.

“We outgrew our location,” Winkel said. “...We continued to hire people but there was not enough room for people to do their jobs.”

The new facility quadrupled the practice’s space from 2,000 square feet to roughly 8,500. It also expanded from five exam rooms to 12 as well as two procedure rooms.

OFFICE MANAGER Jan Thomas said the new location is a representation of the clinic trying to meet patients where they’re located.

“The concept of primary care is changing,” Thomas said.

She said on a national and local level, there’s been a reemerging effort to connect people with care before they have a health emergency that requires an emergency room visit or hospital stay.

On Jan. 1, Kalispell Regional practices were selected as testing grounds for a national pilot program that aimed to reinforce that goal. The five-year project, called Comprehensive Primary Care Plus, redesigns provider reimbursements’ foundation from the number of patients they have to patient care.

Winkel said the change in funding has helped the clinic’s focus on preventative care, such as providing more outreach to screen for diseases like cancer.

“We’re trying to keep [patients] outside of the hospital,” he said.

Thomas said that also means when a patient needs to tap into hospital resources for a procedure or specialty care, the clinic helps manage the transition of care.

She said the clinic recently hired a care coordinator, who helps patients before and after they face major procedures. The new position means patients will get calls from the clinic to ensure they’re taking their medication as prescribed and going to follow-up appointments, with a specialist or their primary doctor.

“We look at the patient as a whole,” she said. “We’ll have resources to be able to refer out and help patients navigate through the complicated health system.”

BEFORE OPENING his practice in the 1970s, Winkel said he was searching for a place that had access to mountains and a medical community.

“That was Kalispell,” he said. “It was way ahead of its time, even then in 1977,” he said.

Winkel said Kalispell lagged behind major city centers, but specialty care was arriving to the valley as the hospital grew.

Since Winkel’s arrival in the Flathead, he’s served generations of Montana families.

The new space features elements of the rural and mountainous land Winkel fell in love with through local art hanging on its walls. The nucleus of the building is a nursing station. Branching off from the station are four pods, one for each provider.

The waiting room has high-vaulted ceilings with a towing window that has a view of several homes and a school across the street — the view that Winkel said he was looking for.

Winkel said the space has potential for more additions down the road. But he said by the time that happens, he doesn’t expect to still be practicing medicine.

“This is probably it for me,” Winkel said looking around the room. “We don’t want to be a huge clinic — we don’t want to lose our connection to our patients.”

Reporter Katheryn Houghton may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at khoughton@dailyinterlake.com.