Southeast Wichita soon will be home to a much-needed service

With the purchase of one new building, GraceMed Health Clinic is going to be able to serve its patients in two big ways.

GraceMed, which has 16 clinics statewide that focus on serving the uninsured or underinsured, has purchased 22,560 square feet of the 35,500-square-foot Eastridge Shopping Center at the northeast corner of Lincoln and Woodlawn.

CEO Venus Lee said GraceMed did research and found that a lot of patients from the southeast part of Wichita have to go out of their way to seek medical care.

“It just felt like the right location to put a clinic there,” Lee said.

In addition to the clinic, GraceMed is moving its call center to the new property, too.

“It takes all the calls from all the locations,” Lee said.

The call center currently is in GraceMed’s administration building at 1150 N. Broadway.

“We were needing to grow that call center by 30%, and there was no way to do it,” Lee said.

GraceMed is a federally qualified health clinic that offers a range of services, including medical, dental, optometry, podiatry and behavioral health at 12 clinics in Wichita, two in Topeka, one in Clearwater and one in McPherson.

Lee said GraceMed owns the majority of its buildings. It is in the process of buying its clinic space at 1122 N. Topeka, and Lee said it was important to own the Eastridge space, too.

“We wanted to be able to design it the way we needed it.”

At the new space, GraceMed will offer a medical clinic, and later it will add dental and behavioral health services.

The first phase will be to open the call center “with the clinic close behind,” Lee said.

That will happen between the second and third quarters of 2022.

Businessman Jeff Ablah sold part of his Eastridge center to GraceMed.

“It is a huge positive for the neighborhood,” he said. “It’s a very densely populated area.”

Ablah said between the pandemic “and just basic mania in the country,” it was hard to attract tenants, especially national ones.

His family’s Pop’s Pawn Shop is at the center, and Ablah said he started telling customers that GraceMed will be opening there.

“One guy actually screamed and said, ‘I’ll finally have a place to take my baby boy when he’s sick.’ It made me feel really good.”

When the call center moves, Lee said there will be room at the downtown administration building to offer patients help with issues beyond their health care, including help with benefits, rent and food and assistance for those who may not know their rights.

“That’s what our patients are missing,” she said. “They’ll be able to get the legal civil services that they can’t afford now.”

She said it is something GraceMed has been wanting to provide.

“There’s so much need out there.”