GraceMed begins work on South YMCA clinic

After four years of planning, some funding setbacks and a one-year delay in the groundbreaking, GraceMed’s clinic on the Richard A. DeVore South YMCA campus is under construction, with the hope that it will open early next year.

“These are not communities where a private practice will go and set up shop,” said Dave Sanford, CEO of GraceMed Health. “GraceMed goes where no one else, quite honestly, goes.”

GraceMed is a nonprofit health care clinic affiliated with the United Methodist Church. It offers a sliding-fee scale for patients and primarily serves low-income, uninsured and underinsured populations.

The South YMCA clinic – whose formal name is the Virginia and George Ablah Family Clinic – is part of GraceMed’s $12 million project that began three years ago to expand health care access to south Wichita’s underserved population.

It’s called Project Oasis and includes the South YMCA clinic, 3405 S. Meridian, as well as three school-based clinics: West High School, Jardine Middle School and Oaklawn Elementary School.

All three school clinics are now open and offer preventive dental services as well as family and pediatric care.

To commemorate the construction of the South YMCA clinic, GraceMed will host a “ground blessing” at 9 a.m. Thursday.Various community officials will speak at the event, including Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., and Sedgwick County Commissioner Tim Norton.

Clinic details

When finished, the 15,600-square-foot facility on the South YMCA campus will have 18 exam rooms, seven dental rooms, two vision lanes, two behavioral health counseling rooms and a simple procedure room.

Originally, GraceMed planned for the clinic to be double its size and open by the beginning of this year. But the organization ran into funding obstacles when it didn’t receive a $1 million grant from the Tulsa-based J.E. and L.E. Mabee Foundation.

Because of that, GraceMed downsized its plans and designed the clinic with an intent to later expand it to 26,000 square feet. At that point, Sanford said, the clinic could serve 17,474 patients each year with roughly 49,000 annual visits.

Sanford said GraceMed is now $500,000 short of the $12 million total. The three school-based clinics cost $5.5 million combined, and the South YMCA clinic costs $6.5 million.

The bulk, he said, came from community fundraising.

“Kudos to the community, because people have really stepped up and supported this project,” Sanford said.

The South YMCA clinic will serve as a hub for GraceMed and offer more services than its satellite locations. Those services include restorative dentistry, vision, behavioral health and pharmacy, but won’t begin immediately.

“We knew people that lived and worked in that area had to travel long distances to get basic medical care,” Sanford said.

“That’s the overall mission: To establish clinics easily accessible to people that live in low-income areas and have significant obstacles to access health care.”

Sanford said the YMCA leased the land to GraceMed for $10 per year for the next 40 years.

Ronn McMahon, president and CEO of the Greater Wichita YMCA, said the partnership seemed natural.

“It helps take a holistic approach on folks in the community,” he said.

“We’re excited it’s under construction and moving forward.”

This story was originally published June 26, 2016 at 2:48 PM with the headline "GraceMed begins work on South YMCA clinic."