Bayfield this spring will have a primary-care clinic, a branch of Mercy Family Medicine.
Mercy Regional Medical Center spokesman David Bruzzese said the clinic will occupy around 3,200 square feet in the Bayfield Center Plaza on Wolverine Drive. It will have five exam rooms and one room for procedures.
“It looks like February might be when the improvements to the building occur,” he said. “We’re looking at an opening time around April 10.”
The clinic will provide family medicine including pediatric care, Bruzzese said. The clinic will take Medicare and Medicaid patients.
The tentative plan is to have the clinic open five days a week from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., but that could change. “We are still recruiting staff,” he said.
The staff members could be physicians assistants, nurse practitioners and a doctor, or some combination of those depending on recruitment results, Bruzzese said.
A nurse practitioner tried operating an individual practice in Bayfield a couple years ago for a few months, and in the mid-2000s, a doctor operated an individual practice in Gem Village. Ignacio Family Medicine operates four days a week in Ignacio, providing the closest medical care for most Bayfield residents. Many in Bayfield have to take off work or take kids out of school to go see a doctor or nurse.
“My understanding is we are trying to keep care close to home for as many people as we can,” Bruzzese said. “Bayfield doesn’t have another primary-care provider.”
Access to preventive care and wellness services make it so patients “are less likely to need hospital care down the road,” Bruzzese said.
“We call it moving health care upstream,” he said.
The clinic will be tied with electronic records to Mercy Family Medicine on the hospital campus in Grandview, the hospital itself and the Centura Health network. Mercy Family Medicine is part of the statewide Centura Physician Group.
Mercy also operates an adult primary-care clinic in Durango that will be moving to a multipractice medical building now under construction on East Eighth Avenue in Durango near the Sonic Drive-in.
Bruzzese said Pediatric Partners of the Southwest is developing that project. The Mercy adult clinic will be a primary tenant, along with Centura Center for Occupational Medicine and several other providers.
