KHS finds replacement to run Potter Health Clinic

The Potter Health Clinic was recently set back by the resignation of Tiffany Contet, who was going to run the operation a few days a week. However, it did not set back things for long, because Kimball Health Services has already appointed a replacement.

Kim Hafeman is a physician assistant who will be the primary person running the Potter Health Clinic and her back up will be Holly Debrinski a nurse practitioner, according to Ken Hunter CEO of Kimball Health Services.

“We’re going to open with an LPN(Licensed Practical Nurse) and a provider. We have the signage up on the Potter Health Clinic,” Hunter said.

The Village of Potter has played a key role in getting this clinic up and running. The support of Potter being vital to the development of the clinic.

“The Village of Potter has leased the space to us for $100 a month, and they have been extremely supportive. They went in and painted the space that will be used as well,” Hunter said

Hunter also expressed that the anticipated hours of operation for the Potter Health Clinic are Monday, Wednesday and a half day on Friday. Labs will be couriered back and forth from the Kimball Hospital to the Potter Health Clinic. Bemis is providing the pharmaceutical services for the new clinic. Getting all the details worked out now is beneficial due to a future state survey.

“We’ll get surveyed by the state once we’re open. They don’t actually survey the facility until it’s already open. It’s okay for us to open, we’re ready, we just don’t know when our official date of opening will be,” Hunter said.

Part of the reason for the “to be determined” opening date is the fact that their newly appointed primary needs to give a certain amount of notice to her current employer. Hafeman will work at Kimball Hospital on the days that the Potter Health Clinic is not open. Hunter went over more reasons why Hafeman is a good fit for the job they have given her.

“Kim is interesting, because she is a medical technologist, which means she’s a lab person. She worked in Sidney and so she knows a lot of both Sidney and Potter, which is a very good thing,” Hunter said.

Hunter said that it took about four weeks for them to find the replacement for Contet. They had to try and find someone that had good experience. Hafeman had worked in the labs for roughly seven years prior to her position as a physician’s assistant. The experience being of great worth, coupled with a knowledge of the area that she would be working in made her a good fit for the position of which she was hired.

However, some still may wonder why Potter was chosen as the location for the upcoming health clinic. Hunter explained the reasons behind the decision on the location.

“We think that Potter even though it’s a community of only about 400 people it’s a growing population,” Hunter said.

Hunter also expressed that Sidney’s growth was also a determingin factor for the location choice. However, the real reason was shown in the Hospital’s zip code data.

“We took a look at all the zip codes we serve, and that gave us a good idea of how many people we serve from Potter, which is a growing amount. That mixed with the fact that the village board has just been so supportive of us getting set up in there, they’ve really rolled out the red carpet, so-to-speak,” Hunter said.

Another factor had to do with there being a mere 3,800 people in Kimball County. According to Hunter that is not enough to be offering the services that Kimball Hospital performs.

“Ideally we want to be servicing five to seven thousand individuals. We’re trying to run an emergency room and acute care. This community really needs an emergency room. We want to continue to be a full service hospital, and in order to do that we need to be serving people,” Hunter said.

The other factor that is seemingly small but is rather beneficial to the hospital is that the clinic is going to be a rural health clinic. This means that they get paid on cost rather than volume. This is important when operating in areas of lesser population, since it rids the clinic of the burden of having to serve a certain amount of people in order to continue operating.

In the past the clinic in Potter was too expensive to keep open, given that the doctor running it was not seeing anymore patients than if he stayed in Kimball. This of course was when the clinic was not certified as rural and was running off of the volume of patients it was seeing. However, with the new rural system and certification in place the clinic should be much more cost effective.

There is no certain date for when the clinic is to open, however, tentatively it should be sometime in August.