Senators find money for Wasilla Native clinic

WASILLA — The new Valley Native Primary Care Center under construction on Palmer-Wasilla Highway is likely to open two months early, sending Alaska’s U.S. Senators seeking funds to make it happen.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski said the state actually has Indian Health Service clinics in Nome, Barrow and Wasilla due to open soon.

“You’ve got a situation where in one state you’ve got three facilities that are moving through the build-out and will be ready for the ribbon cutting. That means that you then will need the staffing package in place,” Murkowski said.

A “staffing package” is a bundle of money that comes through IHS to make sure a clinic is ready to open. Murkowski said it looked like IHS would have the money for the Valley clinic by its planned opening date in October.

But Southcentral Foundation’s contractor Neeser Construction got its work done early. Southcentral Foundation will operate the clinic with federal IHS funding.

Ileen Sylvester, the foundation’s vice president of executive and tribal affairs, said that the clinic will have its ribbon-cutting ceremony Aug. 1 and start seeing patients toward the end of the month. She said the foundation has a good track record working with Neeser.

“We have actually done several projects with them, so I think we have learned to work well together,” she said.

But Murkowski said that caused some trouble for IHS.

“They just said it’s not scheduled for this year we don’t know how we’re going to make this happen,” Murkowski said. “Southcentral was effectively going to be penalized for their success in completing the project ahead of schedule.”

So on May 17, Murkowski met with IHS Director Dr. Yvette Roubideaux, explained the situation, and got a pretty good response, she said.

“It was just really a matter of a couple of weeks here and we got word from IHS that the staffing package will go forward,” Sen. Murkowski said.

An announcement from Sen. Mark Begich’s office said he’d also spent months pushing IHS for the money and was pleased to see it made available. He noted, as Murkowski did, that the $2 million going to the Valley clinic is the same amount heading to Nome and Barrow.

Murkowski said she understands that the $2 million heading to the Valley will go into radiology and the pharmacy.

Sylvester confirmed that was the plan, saying that initially the clinic will move everyone working in the current clinic in a strip mall near the Alaska Club in Wasilla, add the pharmacists and radiologists and accompanying staff and some things like administrative staff. They’ll also add one more primary care team and some wellness coordinators.

Gradually, the clinic will add more staff as more of the promised IHS funding arrives. The agreement between Southcentral and IHS calls for $27 million in staffing funding. The first installment should deliver half of that. But Southcentral can’t hire people based on that.

“It’s not signed, sealed, delivered by any means,” Sylvester said.

Once the whole place is fully staffed, Sylvester said, more than 200 people will work there.

Murkowski said she was pleased to get the funding together and noted that the clinic is a big deal for the Valley.

“This is hundreds of jobs. This is an economic boon for the community,” Murkowski said.

Speaking of jobs, the Southcentral Foundation has numerous medical and clerical jobs listed on its website, scf.cc. The foundation usually posts jobs through the state’s job board at alexsys.labor.state.ak.us and works with the job center in Wasilla.

Sylvester said the new clinic will help expand services offered locally to Alaska Native people in the Mat-Su Borough. Alaska Native people were the fastest growing segment of the population in the Mat-Su Valley, increasing by more than 50 percent since the 2000 U.S. Census.

“It’s been an amazing project,” Sylvester said. “It’s going to bring so much needed health care.”

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.