New Gritman building to provide expanded services
Moscow’s Gritman Medical Center is planning to construct a new four-story building on the triangular lot between Main and Jackson Street in downtown Moscow to provide several different medical services to the community.
Adina Bielenberg, spokeswoman for Gritman Medical Center, said the hospital plans to partner with regional providers to offer new services.
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Gritman Medical Center purchased the traingular lot on Jackson and Main streets and plans to construct a new medical facility.
“We are a small hospital,” said BJ Swanson, chairwoman of Gritman’s Board of Directors. “We can provide these services with partners.”
The Community Health Association of Spokane (CHAS) has agreed to partner with Gritman to use the first floor of the building to open a new clinic to expand their current services, Swanson said. The new clinic would provide dental, substance abuse and behavioral health services not currently available in Moscow.
“In my opinion that is awful that we can’t provide those services in our community,” Swanson said. “It is those partnerships that provide needed health services.”
Currently, if a person comes to Gritman needing some kinds of behavioral health services, they have to be transported to either Lewiston or Coeur D’Alene, Swanson said, and if that person is brought in by the police then the police have to transport them.
The building will also include an Inland Northwest Blood Center blood bank, Swanson said. This partnership will help keep the area stocked with blood and give people a consistent place to donate, most of whom will likely be University of Idaho students, Swanson said.
“UI students have been very kind accepting a blood center,” Swanson said.
The building will also have a pain clinic that can help people with chronic pain and an oncology clinic to provide chemotherapy and other services to help patients fight cancer, Bielenberg said.
“We are driven by what the community needs and the wellness of the community,” Bielenberg said. “That is what we look at for services in the building.”
Gritman purchased the property from Christ Church in the last week of February, after a similar proposal was not selected by the Urban Renewal Agency for the vacant lot on Jackson and Sixth Street, Bielenberg said.
Gritman met with designers and architects last week to begin the design and building process.
The new building will also have a positive economic impact on the Moscow community, Swanson said. The services providers in the building would create around 70 new jobs that would pay an average of $25 an hour.
More people in the region are also expected to travel to Moscow to receive services from the clinics, Swanson said. CHAS expects about 150 patients a month as soon as its doors open, some of them will be from out of town, Swanson said.
The out-of-towners may want to have lunch in Moscow and maybe do a little shopping, Swanson said, which will help local businesses.
“It benefits the community, it benefits Latah County and it can also benefit Whitman County,” Swanson said.
Graham Perednia can be reached at [email protected]