Ethan Hoagland
*Correction: Original story indicated the total cost of the building was 3 million. 3 million is the total amount raised.*
October has been a historic month for bringing healthcare access to Sweet Home. On Friday, in the cold October gray, Samaritan Health Services cut the ribbon on the brand new Sweet Home Medical Center to a crowd of city officials and excited community members. Located right next to Wiley Creek Senior Living and Wiley Creek Memory Care (which enjoyed its own ribbon cutting earlier this month), the medical center will offer family practice, urgent care, x-rays and more.
“You go back seven years when we started looking at what to do with Wiley Creek, we made a grave mistake,” Marty Cahill, CEO of Samaritan’s Lebanon Community Hospital said, referring to the decision to turn Wiley Creek Senior Living into a drug treatment center. Community backlash caused Samaritan to change course.
“We engaged the medical students at Western to come out and do focus groups and listen to the community. And we heard loud and clear they needed more healthcare resources,” Cahill said.
The ribbon cutting kicked off an open house, where more than 100 community members came out to see everything the new facility has to offer. The western wing of the building houses the family practice rooms, while the east wing offers walk-in clinic rooms and the x-ray. Special attention was given to the unique wood fixtures adorning the building. Floor to ceiling windows at the end of the hallways will offer patients and their families pristine views of the surrounding hills and trees. Another unique feature: a helicopter pad nestled in the parking lot.
$2 million of the building’s cost was raised within the community, while a third million came from federal dollars given to shovel-ready projects like the Sweet Home Medical Center.
“I am beyond thrilled,” Mayor Susan Coleman said. “It started with a conflict many years ago. And to be able to come to this point where we’re working together and helping the people of Sweet Home, it’s huge.”
Mayor Coleman, along with city council members Lisa Gourley, Dave Trask, Angelita Sanchez and Dylan Richards attended the open house. Other city officials checking out the new facility included City Manager Kelcey Young and Director of Community and Economic Development Blair Larsen.
Council member Gourley was recognized earlier this month by Mayor Coleman for her work with the city council’s Community Health Committee, which helped secure both the medical center and Wiley Creek Memory Care.
Through the end of December, the walk-in clinic will be open Monday through Thursday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.. Patients seeking walk-in care on the weekends will need to wait a little longer. The medical center won’t be open on Saturdays and Sundays until January 2024. The family medicine clinic will be open Monday through Friday 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
“I think this is a wonderful facility,” Sweet Home resident Charlie Hawkins said. “I mean, we got a wreck a week up on highway 20. We got loggers here in town that work up in the woods every day and get hurt. They can come right here instead of having to go all the way to Albany or Lebanon.”
For Cahill and Samaritan Health Services, the work in Sweet Home is far from over. The company still has its eyes on expanding behavioral health, and the old Sweet Home Family Medicine clinic on Main Street won’t just disappear.
“We’ve got the old space we moved out of, about 10,000 square feet. We’re still gonna do physical therapy there,” Cahill said. “I think we still need to get a psychologist out here. We could still bolster up more behavioral health and mental health services. Every community needs those.”
Over the next few months, Sweet Home Medical Center will continue to add staff and equipment, expanding the amount of care they can provide. The days of going far out of town for basic care are numbered.