GOSHEN — Employees with Goshen Community Schools got their first look at the corporation’s new on-site Health and Wellness Clinic during a special open house at the facility Thursday afternoon.
Held from 3 to 6 p.m., employees were invited to chat with clinic staff, enjoy finger foods and tour the new medical clinic, located just to the west of the GCS Administration Center, 613 E. Purl St., Goshen, in a converted section of a large warehouse and storage building on the property.
“Oh it’s so exciting. It has been a long time coming,” said Susan Stiffney, coordinator of health services, wellness and benefits at GCS. “We actually thought about doing this four or five years ago, checked some things out, and decided not to at that point. And then just about a year ago we started talking about it again and had some people come up and present, and we just kind of went from there.”
Stiffney noted that the corporation eventually partnered with IU Health Workplace Services, a medical contracting subsidiary of IU Health Indianapolis and a partner of IU Goshen Hospital, to oversee the clinic’s construction and management.
“They have clinics throughout Indiana and one in Illinois I believe, several of which are in school systems,” Stiffney said. “We felt like they really knew what they were doing, so we’re glad to be partnered with these people who have been so helpful in guiding us through this process.”
According to Stiffney, the new clinic, which will offer everything from physician and nurse services to on-site lab testing, was created in an effort to offer an alternate option for medical services to GCS employees and their families currently on the GCS insurance plan.
“All employees who carry our health insurance will have access to the facility,” Stiffney said. “That also includes the people that are covered on their insurance, so their spouses and their dependents as well.”
According to Joel Conrad, director of on-site clinics and worksite wellness for IU Goshen Hospital, the new clinic will be open 24 hours a week with a nurse practitioner available on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. A physician will also be available on-site every Thursday morning, he said.
“We’re going to be handling a lot of wellness, a lot of prevention, and then also a lot of acute situations,” Conrad said. “For example, say someone wakes up in the morning feeling sick and wants to be seen, they can go online and schedule an appointment through our Health and Wellness website, they can call the center to schedule an appointment, and then they can come in and get taken care of.”
In addition to the actual medical examinations and treatment, Conrad noted that the facility will also offer a number of other health and wellness benefits such as health risk appraisals and wellness education.
“With this clinic we’re trying to increase the overall healthy lifestyle,” Conrad said. “The nurse will be able to do health education classes, they’re going to be working with health risk appraisals, they’ll be doing wellness assessments, all of that.”
That’s all very welcome news for retired GCS employee Diana Garza-Hite, one of the many visitors to stop in to the open house Thursday afternoon.
“I’ll have been retired two years in May, but I’m still under their insurance,” Garza-Hite said. “The clinic is just lovely, and it’s very, very good for us retired people. It’s really going to help me out. So I’m very glad for it.”
Fellow GCS employee Stella Garcia was quick to agree.
“We got a tour from Susan (Stiffney), who really helped get this whole thing started,” Garcia said. “It’s really neat from what I’ve seen so far. I’ll definitely be using it in the future.”
The new GCS Health and Wellness Clinic will be open Mondays and Fridays from 6:30 to 11 a.m., Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1 to 6 p.m., and from 7 to 11 a.m. Thursdays for physician visits.
The office will officially begin seeing patients Monday.
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From left, Jill Mercer, from IU Health Goshen talks with Pirsilla McKelvey and Cindy Hubbard in the new health and welllness center for Goshen Community School employees. SAM HOUSEHOLDER | THE GOSHEN NEWS
School employees get first look at clinic
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