The new Valley View Medical Center location will be at 100 Cedar Crest Dr. in Winlock.
If everything goes according to plan, Valley View Health Center is scheduled to open a new permanent clinic in Winlock in December after more than a year of occupying temporary space following a fire that seriously damaged its former location.
Valley View Health Center announced in October that the clinic had purchased a building at 100 Cedar Crest Drive in Winlock for the new clinic.
“VVHC is currently filing necessary documents with the Bureau of Primary Health Care (BPHC) - Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to include this new facility in our current scope of practice,” Valley View Marketing Director Linda Tomasheck said in an email. “This process can take up to 90 days.”
The clinic is expected to open the first week of December.
“It was a medical facility before,” Tomasheck said. “So the transitioning to Valley View will be rather simple to do.”
Crews are currently working to update wiring to handle electronic health records and are updating the building’s interior with new flooring and paint.
Tomasheck said the clinic will likely be closed for a few days in late November or early December for the move and is expected to open the first week of December.
Valley View’s Winlock offices at 615 Cemetery Road caught fire early in the morning of Oct. 29, 2016.
Crews from multiple Lewis County Fire Districts responded and were able to extinguish the blaze in about an hour, but the majority of the clinic was a total loss.
A few days after the fire, Valley View announced it would open temporary offices at Winlock Family Dentistry at 617 Cemetery Road.
“We transitioned into a very small half of the dental practice that was next door to us,” Tomasheck said.
While the space has been cramped, Tomasheck said the clinic has been able to continue serving all of its previous patients in two exam rooms at that location for the past year, as Valley View Health Center staff have evaluated whether to rebuild or purchase and refurbish an existing building.
“It just took a lot of time to look at all of our options,” Tomasheck said.
The new building is larger than Valley View’s previous Winlock facility, and will include behavioral health services as well as primary care.
“The addition of behavioral health in Winlock is great… Valley View’s aim is to actually get behavioral health at all our facilities,” Tomasheck said. “They’ll have a lot more space. They’ll be able to be fully staffed and have more exam rooms.”
The new clinic will also have expanded parking.
