Wichita school board to consider building GraceMed clinic at West High

Construction on a proposed GraceMed clinic at West High School will get underway soon if Wichita school board members approve a contract for the project Monday.

The board will consider a contract with Walz Harman Huffman to build the 4,500-square-foot clinic, estimated at $978,200. The district would front capital outlay funds for the project, and GraceMed would reimburse the district for the total clinic expenditure.

The proposed clinic at West would be the first at a Wichita high school and the sixth clinic built in the district. GraceMed operates clinics at Cloud Elementary, Dodge Elementary, Gardiner Elementary and Gordon Parks Academy; a fifth clinic at Jardine Middle School is under construction and expected to be complete by December.

If approved, the school district would own and maintain the clinic building. GraceMed would provide the medical resources and personnel, and would lease the clinic space from the district at no cost.

Plans call for crews to break ground in November, said GraceMed CEO Dave Sanford, and for the clinic to begin seeing patients by the start of the 2015-16 school year.

West High, near Lincoln and McLean Boulevard, is one of the city’s poorest high schools. Nearly 90 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, an indicator of poverty.

The proposed clinic is part of a larger GraceMed venture called Project Oasis, which seeks to build clinics in “health care deserts” – areas of the city that lack access to medical or dental offices.

“Our objective is to make sure people, regardless of where they live in this community, have easy access to quality health care,” Sanford said.

The Wichita school board meets at 6 p.m. Monday at the North High lecture hall, 1437 Rochester. Other items on the agenda include presentations about work groups as part of the Multi-Tier System of Supports, district partnerships and the district’s purchasing department.

This story was originally published October 26, 2014 at 11:25 AM with the headline "Wichita school board to consider building GraceMed clinic at West High."