A modest medical laboratory space in a Las Vegas, N.M., strip mall is transforming into an outpatient clinic offering prenatal, psychiatric and primary care, thanks to an infusion of state funding.
Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center in 疯客直播 Fe is using a $1.1 million grant from New Mexico鈥檚 Rural Health Delivery Fund to add clinic services to its lab center at 600 Mills Ave. in Las Vegas 鈥 a move company leaders say will make a major difference to patients in the northern part of the state.
鈥淚鈥檝e had patients traveling down from Northern New Mexico ... quite a distance to come see me,鈥 said Dr. Kristine Parke, Christus St. Vincent鈥檚 physician executive of ambulatory services and clinical informatics. She saw patients in Las Vegas two weeks ago at the clinic鈥檚 soft open.
鈥淚t鈥檚 really a hardship for patients to have to travel that far, so we鈥檙e really excited to have this clinic launch,鈥 she said.
The new services are starting slow and will ramp up in the months to come. In the next few weeks, a Christus St. Vincent psychiatric nurse practitioner will start offering telehealth psychiatric services one day a week for northeastern New Mexico residents out of the Las Vegas site.
A few providers also will soon start going to the clinic on Thursdays for prenatal visits, Parke said, adding patients will still travel to 疯客直播 Fe to deliver their babies.
The hospital is searching for a primary care provider to work full time out of the clinic, and it plans to launch other site-based and telehealth services.
The state grant, which came through a fund created last year, will support the expanded clinic services for the next 2陆 years, said Eric CdeBaca, the hospital鈥檚 manager of business development.
The fund has awarded $80 million to rural health care providers around the state, according to the . An initial 11 organizations received a combined $18 million in October. The Las Vegas clinic was one of 45 organizations to receive funding in the second round of distributions through the grant, which was open to applications from qualified Medicaid providers.
Parke said the hospital has taken on a larger role since the onset of the pandemic and saw the grant as a way to bulk up services.
鈥淲e鈥檙e really a service hub for patients coming down from southern Colorado, from many different parts of the Northern New Mexico region,鈥 she said. 鈥淲e鈥檙e seeing a lot more patients from those regions, and patients are really having a hard time accessing care.鈥
CdeBaca said Las Vegas 鈥 where the hospital鈥檚 lab site has been open since 2007 鈥 was a 鈥渘atural spot鈥 for the hospital to expand.
鈥淗aving these services and cutting off an hour drive time or two hours round-trip for these patients allows us to have an access point to Northern New Mexico to then be able to reach into some of the other spread-out communities in that region,鈥 he said.
Eventually, CdeBaca said, the hospital hopes to expand the clinic鈥檚 reach even further by adding oncology and orthopedic services. He said for now, hospital leaders are grateful the grant funding came together so quickly with support from Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.
鈥淲e really appreciate what the state has done here,鈥 he said. 鈥淭his thing came together very quickly for us and for all the other recipients for the grant as well.鈥