President Mike Cartney, Lake Area Technical College of Watertown, South Dakota, has announced that Rijjy Peterson has been named to the school’s President’s List. The President’s List is a record of outstanding students who, through their initiative and ability, have indicated a seriousness of purpose in their educational program. The President’s List is limited to full-time students who have achieved a semester grade point average of 3.5 to 4.0

Callaway District Hospital and Medical Clinics has welcomed some exciting growth and expansion in recent months, and they aren’t done yet. The facility administration has announced that land has been acquired and plans are underway to erect a new clinic in Arnold.

“We looked at several different pieces of land in Arnold. It’s hard in a small town to find the right piece of land for a commercial property, because there are only so many places in a downtown district where you can build medical facilities,” explained CEO Brett Eggleston. “We worked quite a bit with Arnold Economic Development to identify the property, find someone willing to sell, then negotiate on a property.”

Eggleston said when all was said and done they ended up settling on a property located just to the east and north of the existing clinic, behind the bowling alley. The property is owned by the Arnold American Legion.

“They were very excited to hear about the prospect of a new clinic, so they were very motivated to sell,” said Eggleston.

The property includes about a quarter of a block, which he said will give them plenty of room for parking and room to build - which will be a whole new clinic from the ground up.

“We are looking to build somewhere in the range of 3,000-5,000 square feet. That’s quite a range at this point. We are looking to not only expand the number of hours that we can be open, but also to offer some additional services that the clinic is lacking right now,” Eggleston continued.

He said one of the biggest additions will be adding x-ray, which currently is not available at the Arnold clinic. Any patient needing x-ray services presently must either come to the Callaway clinic or is transferred to North Platte. Those x-ray results are then sent back to the clinic, and the provider then must call the patient back in.

“It’s just not an efficient way to care for people, and it’s a pretty big waste of the patient’s time too,” Eggleston added. “So what we see is, people will bypass the clinic if they know they are going to need x-ray services and some will come to Callaway, but some will just go on to North Platte. Then we lose out on caring for that patient.”

The current clinic is located in the old dental office, which was purchased by Dr. Shepherd back in 1980. Both Shepherd and the dentist practiced out of that office for a short time. “Dr. Shepherd was not the typical physician that you would see move to rural Nebraska, and certainly not the typical physician that you would see stay in a community for 47 years,” said Eggleston

For the most part, the staff of the Arnold clinic is expected to remain the same in the new location. That includes a registration person, a nurse, a provider and a lab tech. “The nice thing about x-ray in a rural clinic is you can actually dual-train your nursing staff, so they can function as a limited radiographer and a nurse,” explained Eggleston.

He noted that as the clinic gets busier they will look at adding staff in the future. The Arnold clinic is currently open only on Mondays and Wednesdays, and Eggleston said the initial thought for the new clinic will be to open three days a week to cover both the front and end of the week. However, those details are still not set in stone.

The property was purchased about three weeks ago, and on May 16 the first meeting was held with the architect to begin the design phase of the project. “If all goes well we hope to be able to start building this fall, and depending on the winter maybe going into the springtime,” Eggleston said. “We have a big concern in terms of electrical. Because we are adding x-ray it will require some special transformers, and those are on a 50-week delay. One of the first things will be to identify the power needs so we can get it ordered and hopefully phyavoid some of that delay. Potentially what we would do is build utilizing temporary power, then have to convert later depending on when that supply becomes available.”

Dr. Loper, Dr. Williams and P.A. Tessa Keeney currently rotate through a schedule to provide care at the Arnold Clinic. “As we get closer to a grand opening we are going to start looking for another provider, which would help with the call schedule for the ER here in Callaway, help with clinic coverage and with weekend coverage. It is something we need to do anyway, this just gives us a little push,” said Eggleston.

The clinic is working on acquiring grant funding to help with the project, and Eggleston shared there are individuals interested in making some sizable private donations. The anticipated cost of the completed project will be about $1.5 - 2 million. The new clinic will likely have four exam rooms.

The space currently serving as the Arnold Clinic was built in the late 1940s or early ‘50s and has very narrow doorways and hallways, and small rooms, which causes some accessibility issues for patients. That, said Eggleston, was basically the primary factor behind the push for a new location.

“We want to attract more patients to the facility by adding more services, but we also want to make it more accessible and easy to get to,” he explained. “We are also considering the possibility of adding a retail pharmacy to the facility, but that is not a done deal yet.”

Eggleston said one of the options was to tear down the existing clinic and rebuild, but that would entail having to close for a few months leaving those patients without care in Arnold. The options of building at a new site will allow the clinic to continue to service patients without any interruption as the transition is made from the old building to the new one next year.