Regional Health Services of Howard County hosts ground-breaking of $7.73 Million clinic
Wed, 06/07/2023 - 4:12pm
admin
CRESCO - It was a great day for Regional Health Services of Howard County (RHSHC), officially breaking ground for a new $7.73 million expansion and remodel of the Cresco Medical Clinic facilities.
With many dignitaries and a nice crowd attending, Robin Schluter, the CEO of RHSHC, opened the venue with a welcome and telling about the process on how this expansion took place.
“Back in October of 2021, we were still in the midst of Covid,” opened Schluter. “We were changing our operations daily to manage all the new expectations and information coming out. We had a respirtory clinic on the back side of the current clinic, and staffed it the best we could. Providers running back-and-forth walking across the street, taking imaging equipment, but we were making do.”
She went on to state that USDA put out a grant (at that time) to try and create some resourses so that communities of Cresco’s size would be ready upon another “Covid-type” outbreak.
“The grant was to get us out of the situation we were in,” she added.
Schluter pointed out that RHS formed a small group, who worked with a very tight timeline, taking a plan they had been working on and putting in many additional hours to rework the whole thing to help the current situation RHS was in (with Covid). On that committee were Diane Trende of RHS and Scott Blum and Josh Brueggemann of the Accord Architect Firm.
In December of 2021, the USDA awarded Howard County Regional Health Services a million dollar grant for this project.
Next, the RHS Foundation Board “stepped up” and started raising funds––that needed to be matched to make the project work.
“So, our foundation board with Heather Johnson, Aaron Hvitved, Darlene Vsetecka, Stephanie Sovereign, Rachel Vsetecka, Ethan Kraft, Donna Thomas, and Heidi Rice stepped up to the plate to help us reach our goal,” stated Schluter. “In addition, we had an employee campaign led by Sammie Lienhard, Amanda Reicks and Amanda Gebel. Our employee campaign raised just over $115,000 for this project.”